Jean-Christophe Servant <\/p>\n\n\n\n
B<\/strong>agamoyo, a small fishing port about 45 miles north of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, may become Africa\u2019s biggest container port in the next 10 years. China\u2019s largest public-port operator, China Merchants Holdings, is about to start what the Ecofin Agency called<\/a> \u201cthe most significant construction project in the last four decades of Chinese-Tanzanian relations.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Part of the $10 billion funding will come from the Sultanate of Oman\u2019s sovereign-wealth fund and China\u2019s Exim Bank. There will be a special economic zone modeled on Shenzhen, China. The piers and docks will extend along 10 miles of coastline, and handle 20 million containers a year, more than Rotterdam, Europe\u2019s biggest port. Tanzanian authorities say it will create an industrial revolution<\/a> in a mainly rural country where 70 percent still live below the poverty threshold<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tanzania, a rare example of stability in this region, has been governed by John Magufuli since late 2015. He is the political heir of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM or the Party of the Revolution), founded in 1977 by Julius Nyerere. According to Daudi Mukangara, a political scientist at the University of Dar es Salaam, the CCM\u2019s original brand of socialism did not withstand \u201cthe neoliberal assault of the late 1980s and \u201990s, which denationalized the very notion of nationalism.\u201d Tanzania has one of Africa\u2019s strongest growth rates\u20145.8 percent in 2018, with a forecast of 6 percent in 2019, according to the IMF\u2014and has begun a massive infrastructure-development program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bagamoyo project will let Oman regain a foothold in Africa; the nearby island of Zanzibar was Omani territory from 1698, and a major center of the slave trade supplying the Gulf states. China, too, is extending its influence in East Africa in Tanzania, which has been a pillar of Sino-African cooperation. Until the mid-19th century, Bagamoyo was an important transit point for copra<\/em> (dried coconut), ivory, and slaves. Many expeditions, including those of Richard Burton and Henry Morton Stanley, set off inland from Bagamoyo, following routes established by Arab slavers. It was also the base for East Africa\u2019s first Catholic mission, and later briefly the capital of German East Africa before the territory passed to the UK. In 1964 Zanzibar was united with Tanganyika, independent since 1961, and the new state elided the two names into Tanzania. <\/p>\n\n\n\n China, a pioneer in Global South relations, is bringing Africa\u2019s globalization full circle in opening the way for Turkish, Egyptian, Indian, and Gulf operators. The new port agreement was made public in March 2013 during the second official visit of China\u2019s President Xi Jinping to Africa; Tanzania was his first stop. No Chinese leader has visited this region as often since Deng Xiaoping launched his open-door policy in 1978.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nyerere visited China 30 times, and the Soviet Union only once. Charles Sanga, his last personal assistant, remembers that \u201cAt the end of his life in 1999, he believed we had only one true friend: China.\u201d Sanga was Tanzania\u2019s ambassador in Beijing at the time of the first Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit in September 2000, attended by just four African heads of state, including the then\u2013Tanzanian president, Benjamin Mkapa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China is Africa\u2019s biggest trading partner<\/a>, ahead of the United States. At the eighth China-Africa summit in Beijing last September, under the \u201cNew Silk Roads\u201d banner, China promised $60 billion: Reuters reported<\/a> that this would be \u201c$15 billion of aid, interest-free loans and concessional loans, a credit line of $20 billion, a $10 billion special fund for China-Africa development and a $5 billion special fund for imports from Africa.\u201d President Xi said he would not fund any vanity projects: \u201cChina\u2019s cooperation with Africa is clearly targeted at the major bottlenecks to development.\u201d In 2000\u201316, China loaned Africa $125 billion, according to the China Africa Research Initiative in Washington. In 2017 bilateral trade was worth an estimated $180 billion, $75.3 billion of it Chinese imports from Africa. US-African bilateral trade is worth less than $39 billion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPresident Magufuli was elected in 2015 on a program of reclaiming Tanzania\u2019s economic sovereignty from Western investors,\u201d said Rwekaza S Mukandala, former deputy rector of the University of Dar es Salaam; \u201cin his view, China is best placed to help him do this.\u201d Octavian Mshiu, head of the Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture, agrees. He recognizes Bagamoyo\u2019s strategic role in \u201cenabling Tanzania\u2019s clear integration in the New Silk Road project and making it a bridgehead for Chinese manufacturing businesses relocating to East Africa.\u201d China views Kenya, Tanzania\u2019s rival as a transit country for commodities from East Africa\u2019s landlocked states, as too problematic. It has become a key US ally in Africa, and is unstable, affected by terrorism and tribalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Tanzania\u2019s main trading partner, China has stayed silent on Magufuli\u2019s slide toward authoritarianism, while the United States and other Western nations have become concerned about the erosion of human rights and the threat to development. They have criticized restrictions on press freedom and freedom of assembly, a cyber-crime act that curtails freedom of information, and a statistics act that prevents the publication of any figures not produced by the government. There has also been criticism of assassination attempts against opponents and the 2017 disappearance of journalist Azory Gwanda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Magufuli was explicit in November 2018, opening the new Dar es Salaam University library\u2014an elegant building funded by China, alongside the Confucius Institute: \u201cChina [is a] true friend who offers help without any conditions. Free things are really expensive.\u2026 The only free things that won\u2019t cost you anything are those provided by China.\u201d In 2016, the United States canceled $470 million in funding from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a bilateral development fund, over Tanzania\u2019s violations of public freedoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tanzania and neighboring Zambia are focal points in the war of influence<\/a> being fought in Africa by the planet\u2019s two biggest economies. It\u2019s Beijing consensus versus Washington consensus: aid without conditions, on the margins of international rules of engagement, in the form of trade agreements dictated by China, versus loans from the IMF and the World Bank, with social and political conditions such as privatizations and reductions in public spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Donald Trump\u2019s administration now clearly wants to block China, which it accuses of \u201cdeliberately and aggressively targeting their investments in the region to gain a competitive advantage over the United States,\u201d as National Security Adviser John Bolton told the Heritage Foundation on December 13. He accused China of resorting to \u201cbribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive to Beijing\u2019s wishes and demands.\u201d China is unperturbed by US accusations and has reaffirmed its promise<\/a> to \u201ccontribute to Africa\u2019s development by putting its own development to good use.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bolton mentioned East Africa in his speech on the new US strategy for the continent: Public debt, particularly in Zambia, would leave countries at China\u2019s mercy. That began a war of words between the United States and China. Tanzania, with Ethiopia, Kenya, and Egypt, is officially a country China identified in 2015 for business delocalizations. Magufuli aims to make it a semi-industrialized nation by 2025. He hopes the manufacturing sector will by then generate at least 40 percent of its wealth, not less than 10 percent as it does now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To finance this program, the government has targeted corruption, misuse of public money, and large-scale theft in the mining industry. Tanzania, Africa\u2019s fourth-biggest gold producer, has altered mining companies\u2019 exploitation contracts, giving the government the right to renegotiate or sever them in instances of proven fraud. The new legislation also does away with mining companies\u2019 right to settle disputes through international arbitration. The tax dispute with Acacia Mining, a subsidiary of the giant London-listed Barrick Gold, which is accused of having understated production for years to save billions in taxes, has ended with an out-of-court agreement with terms and conditions still to be set. Tanzania will receive a 16 percent share in three of Barrick Gold\u2019s mines and 50 percent of the revenue they generate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Magufuli\u2019s blunt style of politics, \u201cas erratic as it is unpredictable\u201d according to a local journalist, initially won support from local young intellectuals. \u201cThen in 2016 the regime began to slide towards authoritarianism,\u201d said former parliamentarian Zitto Kabwe, 42, who leads the Alliance for Change and Transparency (ACT), to the left of the opposition party, Chadema. Kabwe is critical of the patriotic rhetoric of a government that \u201cstill hasn\u2019t had an impact on Tanzanians\u2019 daily lives\u201d and believes that Magufuli\u2019s policy, \u201cthough it raises the fundamental question of resource ownership, has weakened growth in the mining sector and scared off investors, who are now afraid of having to deal with the Tanzanian justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n ACT\u2019s manifesto, the Tabora Declaration, is inspired by the 1967 Arusha Declaration, which began the policy of Ujamaa (Brotherhood), and aims to lay the foundations of a socialism adapted to 21st-century Tanzania. Kabwe is critical of the World Bank and the IMF, \u201cwhich imposed the 1998 mining code, which favors multinational extraction companies, and forced us into a debt trap.\u201d China is no better: It is \u201cadvancing its pawns in Africa in its own interest.\u201d He warned against falling into anti-Chinese rhetoric that serves Western interests: \u201cSixty percent of our external public debt is to multilateral organizations such as Bretton Woods and only 10 percent to China.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Andrew Huang, a tax consultant with a Tanzanian-registered business, is typical of the several thousand Chinese entrepreneurs in the private sector. He\u2019s been here since the late 1990s, and acknowledges that the government\u2019s measures to tackle the mining sector have disheartened some compatriots, who he admits paid no tax: \u201cShowing firmness, as President Magufuli has done, is a good thing for this country.\u201d A flood of Chinese companies is coming, he insists: \u201cTanzania\u2019s development is just beginning. Because of Bagamoyo, this country will soon be Africa\u2019s Dubai.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nTANZANIA AND THE NEW SILK ROAD<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
\u2018ERRATIC AND UNPREDICTABLE\u2019<\/h6>\n\n\n\n