New AU headquarters and China connection

Chinese firms employ every conceivable stratagem to secure contracts, and then ship thousands of unskilled or semi-skilled workers from China to work on sites in Nigeria, thereby depriving Nigerians of gainful employment. Often, they seek upward variation of contract sums and end up with shoddy jobs. The firms have no regard for labor regulations and internationally accepted principles of corporate governance.

In Zambia, in 2011, over a dozen coal miners were shot dead by two Chinese managers of their company because they peacefully protested their inhuman working conditions. Everywhere else on the continent, Chinese firms continue to subject Africans to very inhuman workplace conditions.

The cozy affair between China and despotic African leaders is not, however, surprising. China is not expected to give what it does not have. While the rest of the world are pushing for the tenets of good governance, including the rule of law, accountability, transparency, participatory governance and an effective judicial system in Africa, China continues to prop up oppressive regimes on the continent and undermine aspirations for good governance. She has been the chief backer of Sudanese President, Omar al-Bashir, supplying much of the light and heavy weaponry employed by the regime in its genocide against black Africans in the south of that country (before the split of last July). China plays the same role in Zimbabwe and everywhere else where Africans are facing brutal repression.

African governments must look inwards to find solutions to the continent’s development challenges. China’s $200 million headquarters gift to the AU is definitely a dangerous setback to African rediscovery.– Punch

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Posted by on Feb 11 2012. Filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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