Don't waste the love

ARTICLE: America Still Cherished Around Africa, By EDWARD HARRIS, Associated Press, June 28, 2007

A very true assessment of our greatest advantage in Africa: we're simply not hated there. This is a huge asset not to be dissipated by AFRICOM.

Thanks to Rob Johnson for sending this.

Comments

[Mark in Texas]

As China copes with the PR issues of yet another incident of exporting dangerous or poisonous products, the Chinese will have to either improve their rule sets for catching dangerous products from being exported or they will have to find a market that can buy their stuff and is willing to put up with the occasional shipment of poisonous food or dangerous stuff.

Africa could be that market if the Africans had any purchasing power. Right now, the Chinese are dealing with various unsavory African regimes in order to meet Chinese energy needs for oil. This works as far as the energy needs go, but the payments tend to go to the small group of kleptocrats at the top of those regimes and they tend to spend that money on luxury goods produced in the Old Core.

By directing some of the money that China is investing in Africa into building Brazilian style sugar cane to ethanol plants, China has the option of either meeting some of its energy needs with ethanol or seeing African nations export their ethanol to fill the fuel tanks of European and American cars while selling cheap consumer goods to the Africans involved in the ethanol industry.

Either way, China gets to export products to Africa that have no market in the Core. They start with cheap bicycles, radios, TVs and wristwatches. Within a few years, China can export cars to Africa that will not pass US or European crash tests.

By the time the Africans are ready to demand a higher standard, China will probably be ready to deliver it since they are a few years farther along on the development path.

[Anonymous]

Mark! where ya' been? welcome back :-)