NN42, June 2009
A Safari Towards Aid Effectiveness?
China?s Cooperation with Ethiopia: is Aid Dead as a Strategy, or is it Alive with Ethiopia in the Driver?s Seat?
By Kenneth King, NORRAG, Edinburgh
Email: Kenneth.King@ed.ac.ukKeywords
China; Ethiopia
Summary
This piece briefly looks at the evidence of what China is doing in Ethiopia that might help explain in what sense China is a ?donor?.
We mentioned briefly in the Editorial the question about whether China could in fact be described as an aid donor even if it didn?t like the donor discourse, and didn?t see itself as a member of the ?donor club?. What is the evidence from what China is doing in Ethiopia, for example, that might help explain in what sense China is a ?donor?? And in what sense is she engaged with the discourse of the Paris Declaration?
First some of the ?aid? data in the sphere of education and training: China has sent to Ethiopia almost a hundred of its first young people to be seen as part of the Young Volunteers Serving Africa. They have been engaged in some of the same tasks as are undertaken by Japanese, US and British young volunteers in Ethiopia. China, secondly, has also just built in Addis Ababa its largest education project so far in Africa, a large Ethio-China Polytechnic College (ECPC); it is just about to start operating. Third, China has over the last 6-7 years despatched several hundred experts in technical and vocational training and in agriculture to help staff the expanding vocational and agricultural colleges. And there are others in medicine. Fourth, it has sent to China for long and short term training over the last 2-3 years some 700 Ethiopian trainees. Fifth, Ethiopia is going to have its first Confucius Institute later in 2009; it will be based at the ECPC. These are all in the human resource development sector, but what of aid elsewhere?
China is building in Addis the city?s tallest building which will be the Africa Union Conference Centre. This is not of course an aid project for Ethiopia; rather it is an aid project for Africa within Ethiopia and in fact it is one of the 8 pledges of the Beijing November 2006 Summit. Even more dramatically, China is felt to have been engaged in transforming the urban landscape in Addis Ababa, as well as outside the capital. The ring road and many of the other roads cutting deeply into the old Addis Ababa are executed by the Chinese. Few people can tell which of these are commercial projects for which the Chinese have successfully bid, and which are Chinese aid. Outside the capital, China has allocated to Ethiopia one of the Special Economic Zones pledged to Africa in the Beijing Summit. So Ethiopia certainly figures prominently in the 8 pledges of that Summit.
Yet this doesn?t translate into a discussion of China?s aid policies and commitments to Ethiopia on the Chinese embassy in Ethiopia?s website. There is an interesting speech on the website by the previous Chinese ambassador to Ethiopia, and a reference to $800,000 US of food aid from China to Ethiopia. There is also a speech at the inauguration of the Gotera Flyover in Addis, but there is no use of photographs despite the photo opportunities provided by the huge college, the ring road, flyover etc etc. Nor is there any reference on the web site of the embassy to scholarship and training opportunities, except for a speech at the start of a bamboo training course in China for young Ethiopians. Compared to the web sites of other bilateral donors operating in Ethiopia (e.g. USAID: www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/countries/ethiopia) there is little said about China?s assistance to Ethiopia. The speeches emphasise much more the long-standing relationships, mutual respect and equality, as well as the new strategic partnership forged at the Beijing Summit of the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation in November 2006. They emphasise exchanges at all levels, political, cultural and economic, but they say very little that is concrete about what Ethiopia is giving to China.
As far as the Paris Declaration language is concerned, it is clear that China?s projects like the Ethio-China Polytechnic College can be branded as separate or parallel Chinese aid initiatives. These are highly visible, even if they are not on the Chinese Embassy website. They are presumably negotiated separately with the Ethiopian authorities, just as other major projects like the German engineering capacity building project are. And as major projects, they are represented by separate offices in the Ministry of Education. But this doesn't mean that such projects are not ?owned? and ?aligned? with the priorities of the Ethiopian government; they certainly are high on the Government?s agenda.
As to China?s aid being harmonised and aligned with other donors in Ethiopia, this has not been the case until very recently, though there is some evidence that the Embassy would like to be more aware of other donors? activities. The official position in Beijing is that more collaboration with other donors is in order, according to a senior official from the Ministry of Commerce: ?He emphasised that aid delivery would benefit from collaboration between China and OECD donors, because of their comparative advantages and called for joint action in the field where mutual interests can be found? (Aid Effectiveness Seminar 2008: 6). On the other hand, it would be interesting to know whether in some quarters in Africa, the 8 pledges to Africa from the great FOCAC Summit of 2006 in Beijing might not be almost as well known as the 8 MDGs. Presumably in Paris Declaration language, these 8 pledges from a single nation constitute a parallel process, not harmonised with other development assistance.
It may well be that for Ethiopia, China?s millennium project of the fibre optic cables cutting across the entire country and the huge flyover in the capital, Addis Ababa, are as visible as the Millennium Development Goals. Here are the words of the Chinese Chargé d?affaires at the commencement of the Flyover:
?It is my conviction that with expertise and experience of Chinese engineers and cooperation and support of Ethiopian counterparts, the Gotera interchange will be built into a flyover of friendship and a flyover of the Millennium?.[1]
A lot of donors talk of the crucial importance of the national government being in the Driver?s Seat. China?s spends more money than any other foreign countries in Africa in ensuring that there are adequate Roads for these much-discussed Drivers to use!
References
DFID China et al, (2008) Managing aid effectively: lessons for China? 27-28 March 2008, accessible at http://www.iprcc.org.cn/ppt/2008-05-15/1210812776.pdf.
[1] Speech at the signing of the construction contract, accessible at http://et.chineseembassy.org/eng/zagx/t279758.htm.
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