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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

So what do you suggest as a better alternative?

The West has tried and failed with countless “solutions” for more than six decades now, in many places making the situation worse compared to the start of the decolonization process.

Also, road taxes is a measure that it is also heavily promoted by the European Commission in the Eastern European countries where “its” money is now helping build bridges and highways (I live on such an Eastern European country).

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I think the major issue in this situation is that the loaned money effectively circulates back into Chinese hands, and all that the local economy gets in return is infrastructure that they will in a few years not be able to maintain or develop due to a lack of skill or resources.

So not only are none of the locals profiting from these projects, but more importantly no one is learning and developing the skills to construct and maintain the new infrastructure and services in the region.

This play by China (even if unintentional) is extremely predatory as it only makes the country more dependant on China.

In an ideal circumstance China would manage these projects while training and developing local talent to help develop the local industries. Only then do I believe would these deals be beneficial for Africa in the long run.

So you might believe these project are improving the local regions at the present, but I would be really interested to hear if you still believe so in 10 years.

This is the 101 debt trap propaganda narrative. Few years ago McKinsey field reports of 1000+ PRC firms across africa and 90% of employees were locals. There's studies back in mid 10s that show 70-80% localization figures across PRC infra export projects. Reality is PRC/BRI localization depends on project timelines - quick ones use more experienced PRC labour, long ones integrate more locals, because at the end of the day there's deadlines to meet and govs/people of underdeveloped countries want better infra fast. PRC supply, local demand, and even corruption mostly align in these deals. And what is even "extremely predatory", of course if they use PRC tech they would become more dependant to PRC supply chains just like they would be dependant on west when using western vendors. The western cope is thinking there's something wrong being dependent on PRC who has established industrial base to deliver and sustain these capital projects cheaper than west. Underdeveloped countries with limited indigenous capabilities have to choose who to be dependant on regardless, and without conflicting geopolitics like in ASEAN, PRC is the easy partner of choice.

Yeah, that's a thing - west just exploited the hell out of many parts of Africa, while not improving most places by any meaningful means, just filling pockets of corrupt local dictators. In fact most places are much worse off than they were 60 years ago.

So don't complain that they are fed up and seek help elsewhere, what west has to offer has been tried many times and results are down there. If they end up indebted to Chinese or US or some EU country like France means little difference to them, all else being equal.

The local dictators hide and bring their money to the west only so it is a lie that the money stays in those countries. Most of it is comes to the west and then these politically exposed people are used by the 3 letter agencies of the west to control the poor countries. For those countries the loans from the West or China don't matter only maybe they can better options if they can play the west and China against each other.

It seems unlikely that omnipotent 3 letter agencies have been the cause of African strife for the last 30 years.

Economics does.

Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa have decent economies, and they've followed the same path as many other developed countries.

Moving away from agriculture and raw resource extraction, building industry, and then identifying, incubating, scaling, and exporting services.

The fact that other countries in the region haven't done the same, specifically the largest Ethiopia and DRC, has more to do with internal civil wars.

Hopefully recent stability in Ethiopia and engaging additional generation capacity at the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will kickstart the Ethiopian economy.

(And no, civil wars aren't all started by 3 letter agencies)

lmao if the west really wanted to help Africa or Asia in the name of lifting everyone on the globe out of poverty it would be something like Marshall plan & how EU is integrating the balkans (Marshall plan in todays dollars is like 130 billion :))

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