None of that has put off the Chinese, though. In January, they bought the rights to a vast exploration zone that surrounds a rural village, making the baked wilderness here the latest frontier for their thirsty oil industry and increasingly global ambitions.
In large oil-exporting countries like Angola and Nigeria, China is building or fixing railroads, and landing giant exploration contracts in Congo and Guinea. In mineral-rich countries that had been all but abandoned by foreign investors because of unrest and corruption, Chinese companies are reviving output of cobalt and bauxite.China has even become the new mover and shaker in agricultural countries like Ivory Coast, once the crown jewel in France's postcolonial African empire, where Chinese companies are building a new capital, in Yamoussoukro, paid for by Chinese loans.
Surging Chinese interest in this continent has helped bring about what many Africans believe is the most important moment since the end of the cold war, when democracy was spreading in Africa and Western nations spoke of a "peace dividend" that might ease African poverty.
That blush of interest in Africa quickly faded, though, as did several of the new democracies, and Africans and Westerners have regarded each other warily ever since. Westerners complain about chronic corruption and ineffective government, while Africans lament broken promises on aid and a hostile international economic system.
The Chinese have stepped into this picture, coming to struggling countries like Chad with deep pockets, fewer demands on how African governments should behave and an avowed faith in everyone's ability to prosper.
With intensive efforts across the continent, China's trade with Africa topped $55 billion in 2006, up from less than $10 million in the 1980s. To achieve this growth, it has bypassed multinational institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and flouted many of their lending criteria, including minimum standards of transparency, open bidding for contracts, environmental impact studies and assessments of overall debt and fiscal policies.
There are few better places than Chad to watch for signs of how China's African gambit will pay off. Chad ranks just four places from the bottom on the United Nations scale of human development, yet it is emerging as a critical piece in China's economic push in a broad swath of sub-Saharan Africa, beginning with Sudan and extending in virtually every direction.Despite advanced prospecting by French and other Western firms dating back to the 1970s, Chad's oil had never been tapped. The nation was simply too unstable and the price of oil too low to justify investing much here. The oil that had been found was of low quality, and there was no practical way to get it out.
That changed in 2000, when the World Bank agreed to help finance a $4.2 billion, 665-mile pipeline connecting Chad to Cameroon on the condition that oil revenues be used to fight poverty.
Chad's revenues quickly outstripped expectations, but have not gone into quelling its immense poverty. Mismanagement and fraud have beset the World Bank plan from the start.
Then, in 2006, Chad ended a relationship with Taiwan and recognised mainland China, and the floodgates opened. China bought the rights to several oil exploration zones in the country from a Canadian company and has gone from bit player to center stage in Chad's affairs, confident that it can wring smart profits from the most inhospitable conditions.Indeed, the Chinese dream in this region consists of making finds here and there, using the World Bank financed pipeline to transport the oil and eventually building new pipelines to connect with a Chinese-built grid in Sudan.This vision requires not only finding more oil, but establishing peace between Chad and Sudan.
Darfur, the chaotic western Sudanese region where at least 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million been displaced in a government-backed counterinsurgency campaign, lies next to China's exploration zones. Human rights groups maintain that Chinese weapons have played a major role in the carnage in Darfur.Beijing's recent diplomatic activity in the region may be explained by these Chinese oil interests as much as by American pressure on China to help stop the killing in Darfur.Chinese officials almost invariably describe their relationship with African countries as a win-win - based on mutual respect, aimed at joint prosperity and free of the overtones of exploitation and paternalism that critics worldwide say have governed much of the West's postcolonial relationship with Africa.
- IHT