China, Africa and the Bandung Idea, Then and Now

What does China’s rise portend for Africa, and Africa’s place in the emerging, potentially Sino-centric, new world order? Will China’s engagements with Africa—economic and political—redound to the mutual benefit of both parties? Alternately, will Africa remain a downstream supplier of energy and raw materials, only now more and more to China? Put another way, does the road to African development run through China? Or will future writers, as others have done in the past in respect of Europe, be moved to essay on how China perpetuated Africa’s underdevelopment? These, today, are burning questions, much debated in African intellectual, political and policymaking circles, and also in Chinese ones.