Sino-Tanzanian Cooperation: a stepping stone towards Homegrown Development?

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A Master’s thesis in Political Science, International Relations

Sino-Tanzanian Cooperation:

A Stepping Stone Towards Homegrown Development?

By Janis F. Korn

Student Nr. 11097981

Supervisor: Dr. Michael Eze

Second Reader: Dr. Rosa Sanchez Salgado

Completed and submitted in June 2020

Word count: 17,952

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Abstract

Chinese cooperation with African states has been widely criticized using labels such as neo-colonialism and resource extraction. Contrary to such literature on China in Africa, this work aims to bring out the potentials in the Chinese approach and the inherent challenge to the dominance of Western development theory and practice in Africa. Tanzania is chosen as a fertile case study due to its long history of partnership with China as well as with

Western donors. The thesis thus sets out to explore in what ways Sino-Tanzanian cooperation may create space for alternative and Tanzanian conceptions of development. Postcolonial theory and Post-Development theory inform the theoretical backdrop to this analysis, which subsequently compares and contrasts the Western and Chinese models. Having brought out significant differences, the ensuing analysis of several Sino-Tanzanian cooperation projects reveals that Tanzanian agents have more policy space and learning opportunities when engaging with the Chinese, but that this relationship requires careful management on the Tanzanian side in order to remain beneficial. It is hence recommended that a comprehensive strategy on how to deal with China is formulated to minimise adverse impacts and maximise the benefits, both in terms of immediate developmental outcomes and in working towards a long-term goal of homegrown development.

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1. Introduction

1.1 Thematic Scope

Over the past two decades, the People’s Republic of China has become a major player in Africa in terms of aid, trade and investment. A number of African leaders heartily

welcome China as a new source of funding, especially due to the explicit lack of political conditionalities attached, which is a major difference to much of Western foreign aid

dispersed to African countries under the neo-liberal paradigm. (see Grimm, 2014; Kinyondo, 2019; Looy, 2006) During the Chinese-hosted 2009 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), China promised to disperse $10 billion in concessional loans to African countries, substantially underlining their ambition to further increase engagement with Africa. (Schiere et al. 2011) Conversely, Western donors have voiced concerns that Chinese cooperation may undermine their efforts at instilling ‘good governance’ practices, and, somewhat more

selfishly and often less explicitly, that China is threatening the West’s hegemony of influence over Africa. (see for instance Urbina-Ferretjans & Surender, 2013; Six, 2009) Further, it has been alleged by Western observers that China’s activities on the African continent amount to no less than neo-colonial practice, through the capture of resources, the abuse of local labour and damage to the local polity, economy and environment. (Junbo & Frasheri, 2014)

Whichever way one sees it, the emergence and growth of alternative, southern development partners such as China, as well as it’s unique model of development and mode of engaging in international relations, certainly pose a challenge to traditional, western donors (Six, 2009) – a challenge that may well bring new opportunities and potentials for African agents of development. This possibility is what this thesis aims to critically explore in spite of a large part of the literature being critical of Sino-African relations: To evaluate in what ways and to what extent Sino-African cooperation may be conducive to a ‘home-grown’ vision and path of development. As Mkandawire (2003) writes in the introduction to African Voices on Structural Adjustment: “While others can help, it is ultimately the primary responsibility of Africans to think for Africa and to develop it.” (p. 13) However, the space for thinking about how to develop Africa is argued to be strongly confined by dominant Western developmental knowledge systems that make it neigh on impossible to think outside the parameters of this paradigm. (Mahmud, 1999) Moreover, it has been argued that the dependency brought about by Western foreign aid “stifles both imagination and initiative” (Mkandawire & Soludo, 2003, p. 14), elements of agency that would be quintessential on the path towards genuinely

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6 African visions of development. Drawing on the theoretical foundations of Postcolonialism and Post-Development Theory, this thesis investigates to what extent and how cooperation with China and use of its development model may constitute an important aspect of this path. The East African United Republic of Tanzania is chosen as the central case study, for a range of reasons that will be presented later on. In this context, Chinese involvement is looked to as an alternative as well as a disturbance to the impediments brought about by the dependency on Western aid, which, if leveraged in the right way, may provide the double benefits of immediately contributing to improving Tanzanians’ quality of life while also reshaping the way Tanzanian agents of development think about and approach the future of their country. Regardless of what one’s opinion on the prospects of Sino-African cooperation in this way may be, what is undeniable is the importance of gaining a better understanding of it as well as its interaction with ‘traditional’ donors, and, as will continuously be argued in this thesis, doing so from a Tanzanian perspective.

The increasing importance of studying China as an influential actor in Africa is

reflected by a flurry of academic literature that has been produced on the subject. Such books, studies and articles have unveiled many important general insights on Chinese activities in Africa, including one marked characteristic of their approach: Flexibility to do things differently in different countries. (Ramo, 2004) This means that general insights on continent-wide Sino-African cooperation, while certainly important, cannot tell the whole story by themselves; in light of significant differences between cases, country-specific analyses have much yet to contribute to the field. The call for more country-specific study also emerges in the literature, for instance in Bräutigam’s China, Africa and the international aid architecture. (2010) It is for this reason that this thesis focuses on the single case study of Tanzania, also deemed a suitable choice due to its long-lasting and frequently emphasised partnership with Beijing.

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1.2 Research Question

In light of the scope and objectives presented above, the following research question was formulated to guide the analysis of this thesis:

RQ: In what ways may Sino-Tanzanian cooperation create space for alternative and Tanzanian conceptions of development?

To supplement the answers to this research question, the analysis shall also aim to gather insights on how to best manage Sino-Tanzanian cooperation in order to maximise its developmental utility while minimising associated risks. This aspect is deemed important because it is hypothesised that the better the Tanzanian management of cooperation, the greater the prospects for progress towards homegrown development.

1.3 Outline

The thesis is structured as follows: the theoretical framework, following this section, presents Postcolonialism and Post-Development Theory as two interrelated theoretical backdrops that guide the analysis presented later on. Next, the literature review summarises the current state of research on Sino-Tanzanian cooperation, the Western development

paradigm, the Beijing consensus and African agency in development, respectively. Following a description of the methodology, including a justification for the single case study approach, an outline of methods of data collection and analysis, as well as a discussion of strengths and limitations, the findings section then discusses important aspects of Sino-Tanzanian

cooperation, specifically in infrastructure projects, agricultural cooperation as well as information and communication technology. Finally, the conclusion section derives recommendations from these discussions, supplemented with insights from other African experiences with Chinese cooperation, and then presents a set of concluding remarks and suggests future avenues for research.

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2. Theoretical Framework

This thesis will make use of theory in two major ways. For one, the critical theory of postcolonialism will guide the dissection of the Western development paradigm, as it is argued that this paradigm, structuring a lion’s share of development cooperation to this day, is in large parts a product of discourse traceable to colonial times. Understanding how exactly it is flawed is considered central to any agenda attempting to find alternative approaches, as this thesis does. Further, the related branch of post-development theory is looked to for its insights on how to depart from the status quo of development towards change: If

development theory is flawed, what alternatives exist for African agents, and how may one work towards these alternatives to development? For one, this theoretical backdrop will supply the tools needed to show important shortcomings of Western development theory and practice. For another, it shows what is theoretically necessary to find meaningful alternatives to the Western model, which will help to evaluate the potentials of Sino-Tanzanian

cooperation in working towards such alternatives.

2.1 Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism as Critical Theory

Choosing a theory to approach a certain issue in International Relations (IR) is far

from a straightforward task: IR as a field has been the site of theoretical debates fought with such fervor that scholars have even described what was happening as “academic gang warfare.” (Wight, 1999, p. 113) As Dunne and colleagues (2013) have argued, the vast size as well as complexity of what IR concerns itself with go a long way in explaining the

divergence among scholars in what factors to look at, and how to do so. With the end of these so-called paradigm wars, a subsequent “theoretical peace” (Dunne et al. 2013, p. 406) and openness to plurality entered the discipline, alongside a new enthusiasm towards theoretical testing as opposed to mere theorization and the recognition that different ‘niches’ of IR may favour the application of different theoretical approaches. For the present thesis, the area of interest is situated in Africa, specifically in its relations with the West and with China. It is here argued that colonial history importantly shaped these relations to the present day, especially those with the West. It is this recognition that led to the choice of a theoretical

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9 approach for this study, one well suited to make sense of the ways in which such influence takes shape: Postcolonialism. This approach comes from the family of critical theories, which are essentially united by their critical approach to existing knowledge, the processes of theorization and positivism: “Our thinking is conditioned by social, cultural and ideological influences, and critical theory seeks to uncover this conditioning.” (Zehfuss, 2013, p. 14) There is a broad set of literature exploring how exactly the colonial machinery worked towards conditioning the colonised populations and how elements of colonial discourse have partially been preserved in modern-day Western development cooperation, an exploration of which would however extend beyond the scope of this thesis. For the present purposes, what is significant is that postcolonialism aims to unveil these influences specifically as resulting from colonial experiences, with an emphasis on the recognition that discourses, power hierarchies, global dynamics and the like are to this day colonised. Also, these elements are argued to still exercise “epistemic violence” (Spivak, 1985, p. 251) against alternative imaginaries and Africa’s own ideas and visions, making it all the more important to point them out and work towards decolonising them, since without such efforts it is unthinkable how Africa should eventually take charge of its own development. This thesis will thus progress from the standpoint that these colonised elements must at the very least be recognised as impediments to development, so that we may depart from them and work towards a decolonised and African way forward, to which end the Chinese involvement and the disruption brought by its difference to the West may be an important stepping stone. The theoretical backdrop of what homegrown development may look like, how it can be achieved and why it is preferable to the status quo comes from Post-Development theory. The next section shall aim to explore, with reference to this theory, what kind of alternatives to development may be worth aspiring to and why.

2.2 Alternatives to Development

Departing from the insight that development theory as well as practice is quite deeply flawed, as will be demonstrated in some depth in the literature review later on, we must propose an alternative theory. To this end, I draw on post-development theory, the key positions of which will now be presented for use as a theoretical backbone supporting this thesis.

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10 For one, post-development theorists argue that the poor track record of the

development project since World War II is not down to poor implementation, but can rather be traced to flawed central ideas and assumptions with which the project operates. (see for instance Escobar, 1989; Rahnema, 1997; Kothari, 1988) This means that instead of altering the administration and implementation of development, which has been done for instance by introducing a focus on sustainability, what is needed is a radical rethinking not of the ‘how’, but instead of the ‘what’; the contents and premises of the development project. For instance, it is argued that the post-WWII development project is deeply based on the Western

experience, deemed to be universal, and thus fails to account for the enormous differences in experiences, desires and needs found in the countries it is meant to assist. A helpful anecdote to better grasp this point comes from Senegal: An assumption of conventional development theory is that when someone produces an excess of a product, that someone will give this excess to another person in return for a proportional share of whatever that person has too much of; a basic trade. However, in some Senegalese communities, the societal emphasis is on giving and not on having, thus there is no expectation of proportional return since it is the giving that confers societal standing. (Matthews, 2004) Despite this being but a small and admittedly anecdotal example, it does showcase how central assumptions made in a certain context can fail to apply in another context, which bodes ill for the project making such assumptions: “Development projects cannot succeed unless the values which inform them are shared by the community in which they are implemented.“ (Matthews, 2004) The most important point to make here is not to criticise post-WWII development thinkers for their errors, or to disqualify efforts towards societal and economic betterment altogether, but instead to demonstrate that such efforts can be crippled by a mismatch between assumptions and reality. To prevent such mismatches, the suggestion is simply to create space and means for homegrown alternatives to development. Nobody will be more familiar with the specific needs, the values, the strengths and the weaknesses of his/her community than someone that is actually located within it. For this reason, this thesis sees homegrown African visions of alternatives to development as a goal, and cooperation with the Chinese and their

development model is looked to as an opportunity to work towards this goal. A final note to make here is that despite the Post-Development theoretical background, this thesis will continue to speak of ‘development’, which, when done without further qualification, is intended to simply mean improvement of welfare and society, as opposed to a reference to the post-WWII development project. Post-development theorists are importantly not opposed

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11 to development where it simply means betterment, but instead highly critical of the post-WWII development project and all that comes with it.

With these theoretical foundations in mind, the literature review shall now aim to locate this analysis in ongoing academic debates.

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3. Literature Review

The following review of key literature will aim to encapsulate the academic discourse on three central themes of this thesis. Firstly, existing research on Sino-Tanzanian relations will be summarised in order to place this thesis in the ongoing academic debate. Next, it will consider the literature on what is here referred to as the ‘Western development paradigm’, which is argued to have arisen as a “reconfiguration of the centre–periphery relationship originally established through colonization” (Six, 2009, p. 1103) and as such has importantly structured development cooperation between Africa and western countries. Applying insights from postcolonial theory to the Western development paradigm helps to show how the Chinese model is importantly different and informs the ensuing argument that Sino-Tanzanian cooperation could serve as a stepping stone towards homegrown development. The following section presents arguments on how to depart from this paradigm towards African visions of development. Subsequently, the review will turn to the Beijing consensus as an expression of the Chinese development model in an effort to highlight how the

dominant discourses and practices of Chinese cooperation deviate from those of the western development paradigm and may thus eventually create space for homegrown development. Finally, key literature on African agency will be discussed, given that agency is central both to managing cooperation and working towards the ability to self-determine future

development.

3.1 Sino-Tanzanian Relations: State of Research

Tanzania’s post-independence president Julius Nyerere decided to put Tanzania on a socialist path of development, a political choice that immediately made China a likely partner. Thus, there is a plethora of studies on the historical development of the

Sino-Tanzanian relationship. Bailey (1975) is an early example that describes the relationship as a “friendship between most unequal equals,” (p. 50) where unequal describes mainly the difference in size, population and geography, and equal refers to the similarity in political systems and the mutual detest of the status quo of the international order at the time. In a much more recent paper, Cabestan and Chapponière (2016) find that the relations between the two countries were characterised by great importance and a marked exclusiveness in Tanzania’s socialist period, which then went into a phase of relative decline over time as

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13 Tanzania’s political orientation changed. Today, Beijing stands in competition with other donor countries, most importantly the United States, which has lessened the strong structural role China played in the 1970s – nevertheless the relation is still important and evolving, certainly warranting further analysis, especially in its interaction with other countries’

cooperation with Tanzania. Burke (2007) argues that the relation has moved from one chiefly motivated by ideological similarity to one driven by economic interests. While some

historical context is helpful in placing today’s cooperation between the countries, of greater import to this thesis is the state of literature on contemporary Sino-Tanzanian cooperation, in order to find where exactly the present analysis may fit into, contribute to as well as benefit from the ongoing debate. Several studies have been undertaken from an economic

perspective. Moshi and Mtui (2008) point out that China has attained significant development without adherence to the Washington consensus’ neo-liberal doctrine, appealing to Tanzania to learn from this experience and adapt lessons to itself where applicable. In a related vein, they argue that Western donors and the ideological agenda they typically bring has “shrunk the policy space” (Moshi & Mtui, 2008, p. 21) of the Tanzanian government, and that China’s model contains far more manoeuvrability for Tanzanian policymakers. This thesis shall aim to expand on this important insight by arguing that not only lessons from the Chinese model, but also the Chinese presence in Tanzania can help Tanzania attain more policy space, by creating competition, alternatives and bargaining power. The importance of policy space to development as well the difference between Western and Chinese cooperation in this regard is discussed in greater depth in the later sections of this literature review.

Beyond this, Moshi and Mtui argue that African countries should, both collectively and individually, craft a strategic approach to dealing with China and other emerging donors – another important insight that this thesis shall aim to incorporate by beginning to formulate some elements of such a strategy from a Tanzanian perspective. Another study by Burke (2007) considers the entry of Chinese state-owned and private enterprises into the Tanzanian construction sector, pointing out the important role these companies have in consolidating Chinese presence in the country and “developing the country as a bridgehead into east, southern and central Africa and the natural resources in the region.” (p. 335) A significant takeaway from this is that China values Tanzania as a partner for strategic reasons, an insight that is deemed important here due to the bargaining power this can give the Tanzanians. A 2013 study by Shi and Hoebink discusses Chinese contemporary aid projects to Tanzania in terms of their ‘on request’ nature. They find that through several different channels, including

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14 direct communication between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chama Cha Mapinduzi, Tanzania’s ruling party, Tanzanian party members can request aid projects. Another channel they identify is the Forum on Chinese and African Cooperation (FOCAC), through which African countries can voice collective development needs that are then met by pledges of the Chinese to address. This is contrasted with Western agencies projects, which are argued to be less demand-responsive and more based on own agendas or visions, thus reducing the space for Tanzanian agency in working towards development. (Shi & Hoebink, 2013) It becomes apparent that the literature has started to recognise the importance of studying the dynamics of Sino-Tanzanian cooperation as well as the interaction between Chinese and Western aid. In light of this recognition, this thesis shall aim to contribute to existing literature by

analysing the situation through a postcolonial lens with an explicit focus on Tanzanian

agency. Also, it shall aim to incorporate more recent instances of Sino-Tanzanian cooperation than many of the mentioned studies have, as there have been significant changes in the

country and its foreign relations following the 2015 election of president John Magufuli. Having explored the latest literature on Sino-Tanzanian affairs, we may now turn to a discussion of the Western development paradigm.

3.2 Western Development Paradigm

3.2.1 In Theory

The Western development paradigm is here understood to be “the conceptual

framework of economic and political development co-operation” (Six, 2009, p. 1104), giving structure to economic and political interaction between the so-called developing world and the West as well as containing normative aspects relating to this exchange. To grasp fully the issues with this conception, and to importantly do so from the perspective of the paradigm’s subjects, it is inevitable to consider its colonial origins. Thus, the goal of the following section is to show where and how elements from colonialism and its surrounding discourses contaminate contemporary development thinking.

An Evolving Discourse: From Colonizing to Developing

The discourse to justify colonial practice was based on the Western intellectual tradition of binary thinking: splitting the world into two parts with civilized nations and

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15 peoples on the one and uncivilized tribes and hordes on the other side. (Ziai, 2004; Six, 2009) Within this construct, the former are destined or duty-bound, be it by God or by nature, to aid the latter who are seen as incapable of managing their own affairs. This, as Ziai terms it, “legitimatizing function of colonial knowledge production” (2004, p. 1, author’s translation) simultaneously gives rise to two distinct identities, where the progressive and modern western identity is brought out by separating itself from the backwards ‘other’ that is seen as deficient. It was also within such a constructed hierarchy that the idea of development was initially applied, an idea that may briefly be traced to its origins to grasp its implications.

Already in the 19th_{century, the element of ‘development’ could be found in colonial}

discourse. Certainly, many simply thought race to be the reason for the alleged deficiencies, but some also cited history: John Stuart Mill for instance argued that Europeans had simply progressed further through the stages of human improvement, reflecting the Eurocentric idea that the state of affairs found by colonial powers in Asia, Africa and America were explicable by these people being in earlier stages of a common human evolution. (Ziai, 2004) The idea

of development as the fulfilment of pre-existing potential first emerged in 17th_century

German philosophy, although the term was then used to refer to tangible processes rather than societal and economic change at large. (Six, 2009) During the French revolution the notion of the state as a producer of societal reality gained popularity, as did the concept of development as social evolution, and from this combination emerged the conception of state-led development. (Ziai, 2007) Cross-fertilization with insights from early biology resulted in an “evolutionary interpretation of development [according to which] non-European pre-modern tribes, peoples, etc are equated with earlier stages of Europe’s development.” (Six, 2009, p. 1104) It is thus further implied that the Europeans, in their denial of any important difference between earlier Europe and the current state of its colonies, were the only ones who knew the way up the supposed ladder of human development. This also necessitated a shift in the subject of development: it was now no longer about developing oneself but someone else, since the West already considered itself ‘developed’. At the same time, the geographical target moved from the West to the locations of the colonies, two changes that have been argued to constitute the start of the development paradigm. (Six, 2009)

In order to effectively trace the colonial thinking into contemporary development discourses, we must ask: “How has the global division of power established by colonialism been maintained through relations of global capital, the international trading regime and its preponderant discourses?” (Biccum, 2002, p. 36) Pursuing the postcolonial notion that

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16 language can shape ideology, and ideology in turn shapes politics, influences from

colonialism emerge strongly in development theory. Often, it is equally important to pay attention to what is not being said as it is to critique what is being said – omissions in

political writing can have stark ideological consequences. To illustrate: In its first ever World Development Report of 1948, the World Bank defines a benchmark of an annual per capita income of $100 to determine whether a country is considered poor or not, which classed two-thirds of the world at that time as ‘poor’. (Escobar, 1995) Two important insights emerge: For one, a majority of the world’s countries were suddenly attested poverty, an attestation sold using language of ‘discovery’, as though the discoverers were clueless as to the role of colonialism in creating this state of affairs. (Biccum, 2002) Secondly, defining poverty in terms of arbitrarily benchmarked financial means (as opposed to, say, quality of life) presupposes the solution – economic development – which happens to also be very convenient in facilitating moves to quench the thirsts of Western market economies. (Escobar, 1995) What results from these elisions is a self-serving idea of development that inherently denies any own, that is to say Western, responsibility or even causality in bringing about the issues to be addressed. Furthermore, “development assumes a teleology to the extent that it proposes that the `natives’ will sooner or later be reformed; at the same time, however, it reproduces endlessly the separation between reformers and those to be reformed by keeping alive the premise of the `Third World’ as different and inferior, as having a limited humanity in relation to the accomplished European. Development relies on this perpetual recognition and disavowal of difference.” (Escobar 1995: 53) The binary splitting of the world into two major groups, previously encountered as an element of colonial discourse, also persisted. This linguistic separation exists in today’s development discourse, using terms ranging from ‘developing countries’, (Chumbow, 2005) or, as I myself learned in high school geography, less economically developed countries (LEDCs), standing in contrast with the developed nations. A group of African leaders, voiced in 1976 by President Mobutu Sese Seko of then Zaire (today the Democratic Republic of Congo) pointed out the logical flaw with this nomenclature: All countries perpetually develop, none have reached a development end-state, and so all countries are really developing countries. (Chumbow, 2005) However, this very valid argument did not lead to the abolishment of binary language, but it did help popularise the slightly less laden dichotomisation between the ‘global North’ and the ‘global South’, frequently encountered today. (Chumbow, 2005) This binary

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17 differentiation produces a vertical relationship, reflected also in the terminology of ‘donor’ and ‘recipient’. (Grimm & Hackenesch, 2017)

In their development projects, Western powers have employed “a moralising political discourse of catch-up development, (…) seeking to minimise the social differences between giver and receiver.” (Mohan & Power, 2008, p. 27) This discourse also contains a strong emphasis on human rights, to which the development agenda is tied. Western aid can be described as a liberal bundle of measures intended to stimulate individual and collective liberties by promoting a range of transformations, such as good governance and

democratisation. While emphasising a whole range of rights and freedoms, there is a clear trend of encouraging market mechanisms and decentralising state power. (Mohan & Power, 2008) Thus, the western approach contains a strong normative element, which conveniently also pushes for the type of market liberalism that lets western enterprises capitalise better off these emerging markets. Structural adjustment programmes stood symbolically for this pushing of western market interests onto the African continent. (Ramo, 2004) Despite the departure from structural adjustments programmes as tools, western development aid is still characterised by an overarching aim to liberalise markets as much as possible. In this aim, postcolonial scholars criticise that “the global division of power established by colonialism [is being] (…) maintained through relations of global capital, the international trading regime and its preponderant discourses.” (Biccum, 2002, p. 36)

In these ways, development discourse shows striking similarities with the type of discourse that was used to justify colonialism. The ‘third world’ was thus constructed as a place that requires investigating for the sake of improving it, to which end Development studies were established and spread throughout education institutions, even in the ‘third world’. (Escobar, 1995; Biccum, 2002) This made hegemonic a certain way of thinking about development that is very hard to escape and think outside of, yet this thesis will make an attempt to do so by looking to the Chinese model as a challenge disrupting the intellectual hegemony. However, before this challenge is discussed, it is worth reiterating that

cooperation with China is not here argued to be the ultimate solution to Africa’s or Tanzania’s problems, but rather may be an important stepping stone on a path to a

homegrown and alternative imaginary of development. Now the focus will turn to how the Western interaction with Africa has followed the narrative discussed above in practice, which will also reveal how its failure has created demand and space for the Beijing consensus as a rival model of development and for China as a rival donor.

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18 3.2.2 In Practice – the Case of Structural Adjustment

Structural Adjustment Programmes, (SAP) enacted across several African countries under the so-called Washington consensus, are by far and away the most prominent

expression of the neoliberal Western development paradigm and its failure to help Africa’s development. For this reason, they must be discussed at this juncture. The contents of SAPs are well known, consisting typically of varying combinations of the following elements: Currency devaluation, downsizing the public sector, privatisation of state-owned enterprise as well as market deregulation. These elements were thought to help countries attain economic self-sufficiency and were made mandatory conditions to obtain loans from the BWIs. While there was some evidence to suggest positive initial results, the consensus today is that SAP did not work as a policy package designed to address underdevelopment, and sometimes even caused more harm than good. (Tarp, 1994) One criticism is that the most vulnerable groups were often those to suffer most when states that are already poverty-stricken are pushed to enact austerity measures. Another important accusation is that the BWIs were abusing the poverty and need for loans of poor countries, brought about by colonial times, in order to make these states enact liberalising market policies allowing Western firms to enter and exploit their markets, thus paving the way for further concentration of wealth in Western strongholds. (Halton, 2019; Mulvaney, 2010) Besides the content of the programmes, the manner of their implementation is also important. Beginning around 1985, the Bretton Wood Institutions (BWIs) seized total control of the development practice by insisting that if they were to help Africa, developmental policymaking was going to follow their lead totally, leaving to African policymakers and academics only the side-lines of protest. (Mkandawire & Soludo, 2003) The policies to be implemented were designed and formulated almost

exclusively by foreign experts. Furthermore, SAP conditions can be argued to be deeply antidemocratic: Government officials were pressured into enacting the conditionalities, citizens had no access to loan negotiations and there are even cases where the BWIs

prohibited governments to make public the details of loan agreements. (Mulvaney, 2010) The lack of policy and operating space for the African governments evidently brought much resignation and can thus go a long way in explaining the great appeal that Chinese ‘no-strings-attached’ lending holds. Making use of Chinese concessional loans typically does not entail forced adherence to a set of political conditionalities, hence the space for African

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19 agency and policymaking is not shrunk in the same way. Beyond this, the SAPs and their failure made evident that the West does not have all the answers to development, which, as Mknadawire and Soludo (2003) argue, created a moment of Western humility and a sense of it now being an African responsibility to figure out a path forward. From here on, they argue that Africans themselves should take the “driver’s seat” (p. 13) in thinking and acting towards the development of their states. This need as well as the possibility to take responsibility is compounded by the increasing importance of non-Western donors, most prominently China, and the accompanying erosion of Western dominance over both the content and the terms of development practice in Africa. (Phillips, 2008) The next section shall explore how these developments in the donor landscape may help to push Tanzania onto a path of homegrown development.

3.3 Towards ‘Homegrown’ Alternative Development

Chinese involvement in Africa, using its own unique development model, poses an important challenge to the Western discourses and practices on development. It does so, for one, by challenging Western hegemony with new ideas, principles and discourses on

development. Expanding on an argument brought forward by Mahmud (1999), the creation of alternative approaches and vocabularies, as indisputably brought about by Chinese

involvement in Africa, may be an important first step in eroding the Western developmental hegemony, a possible beginning of a wider mission to “create and expand a space at the margins of the present neoliberal global civilization for a new, plural, political ecology of knowledge.” (p. 34) As such, this thesis looks to China as a disruptive force that could well create initial space for change and African agency in development discourse and practice. Gayatri Spivak noted that the project of colonialism involved “epistemic violence” (Spivak, 1985, p. 251) against other imaginaries, and the same can be argued to be the case for the modern-day development project: It becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to think and speak outside the developmental hegemonic knowledge systems. (Mahmud, 1999) So how may one begin to escape this prison, and what role could China play in this respect?

As Mahmud (1999) writes, a theory of alternative development action can only be a result of a people’s struggles at particular junctures. It is here hypothesised that if nothing more, Chinese involvement on the continent creates new sites for struggle, new conjunctures

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20 characterised by different constraints and challenges, thus shaking up the hegemonic order and, hopefully, making room for the eventual emergence of African theories of action and self-devised imaginaries of development. Following Mkandawire and Soludo (2003), this thesis takes the position that “each country must, out of its own historical experiences, forge its own vision and design the requisite institutions to effectuate development. Outsiders can assist, but they can never substitute for local initiative.” (p. 13) As was previously argued, it is certainly the case that people from a certain context have the most detailed knowledge of the values, needs and aspirations of this place as they relate to the development agenda. China brings a new discourse to Africa, complete with different ways of doing things, and this alone may suffice to loosen the firm grip of the western development project on African minds. While this thesis adopts an optimistic stance with regards to Sino-African cooperation in this way, the analysis must nevertheless remain critical of potential risks and pitfalls that may accompany the Chinese model, including the danger of simply becoming dependent on a different donor, since depending on foreign ideas and implementation is toxic to one’s own ability to imagine different pathways and taking the initiative to embark upon them.

(Mkandawire & Soludo, 2003)

One may also want to interject at this point that if the ultimate goal is an African (and in our case a Tanzanian) home-made theory of action, free of foreign conceptions and

teleologies of development and modernity, the best way to do so would be to turn one’s back on these foreign powers altogether. However, we have to remain pragmatic and realise that the conditions Tanzania and many other African countries find themselves in are a hard reality; poverty and the suffering that comes with it is very real, regardless of how this was brought about by colonial times. To alleviate this as quickly as possible, there is no real alternative to engaging with foreign powers for their assistance, but this thesis will attempt to argue that this should be done, as well as possible, in a way that eventually allows African nations to escape the developmental hegemony and truly take charge themselves.

The focus shall now turn to the so-called Beijing consensus, to explore in what ways the Chinese model of development and Chinese cooperation importantly differs from the Western approach.

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3.4 The Beijing Consensus

The term ‘Beijing Consensus’, merely by word choice provoking comparisons with the Washington consensus, was coined by Joshua Cooper Ramo (2004). Despite the similarity in nomenclature, the two really do not have all too much to do with one another. The Washington consensus was a prescriptive economic theory that gained fairly brief popularity in the 1990s. The derived recommendations caused a significant amount of damage to several developing economies, particularly in Africa and also in this thesis’ case study country of Tanzania. Typical elements of a Washington consensus style approach to development included wide-spread privatisation and removals of barriers to trade. The Beijing Consensus is comparable only insofar as it also refers to a general approach to development, but it does so in a much wider, less prescriptive and rather flexible manner. (Ramo, 2004) Before we dive into a discussion of what makes the Beijing Consensus, it should be pointed out that the term was devised by Ramo and is thus not an official term, and that its contents were sourced from over 100 off-the-record interviews with thinkers and decisionmakers from Chinese academia and politics, as opposed to official governmental releases for instance. (Ramo, 2004) Nevertheless, his insights are deemed valuable and can frequently be traced in the practice of Sino-African cooperation, making them a useful foundation for the ensuing analysis of the Sino-Tanzanian case.

Encapsulating the Beijing Consensus within a single sentence is difficult, but Ramo makes a worthy attempt in the following:

“China is marking a path for other nations around the world who are trying to figure out not simply how to develop their countries, but also how to fit into the international order in a way that allows them to be truly independent, to protect their way of life and political choices in a world with a single massively powerful centre of gravity.” (2004, p. 3)

This sentence points to some of the key aspects and principles of contemporary Chinese development thinking: Non-interference, respect for one another’s internal affairs and Chinese-style development, marked by own agency and independence. In practice these principles mean that there are no conditions relating to African internal affairs attached to

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22 Chinese loans, grants or aid projects. Certainly, there may be conditions of other types, for instance relating to the international recognition of Taiwan, or prescribing the use of Chinese enterprises for construction. However, conditions of Chinese aid will not push for certain internal policies over others, and thus the policy space for African policymakers is not impeded upon in the same way as is often the case with Western conditional aid. While for Western development cooperation we spoke of a vertical relationship signified by the terms ‘donor’ and ‘recipient’, the Beijing consensus principles of equality, mutual interest and partnership stand for a horizontal relationship, in which China likes to term itself a ‘partner’ rather than a ‘donor’, emphasising that China itself is still developing and should not be considered, as the Western donors are, a developed country. (Quadir, 2013) Evidently, this rhetoric is somewhat questionable given the fact that China is, in terms of most development indicators, on a higher level compared to its African partners. Nevertheless, the fact that China was itself colonised and was never a colonial power in Africa itself certainly produces a historical backdrop that can to some extent justify terming Sino-African relationships both ‘South-South’ and ‘horizontal’. The Beijing Consensus approach to development is

furthermore oriented primarily towards improving the welfare of society as a whole (as opposed to, say, individual welfare), and in that it is flexible and allows for trial and error: Different situations need different solutions, these cannot be known a priori, so innovation and experimentation are essential. (Ramo, 2004) Further, there is no belief in or time for a step-by-step gradual modernisation, instead the Beijing consensus “insists on the necessity of bleeding-edge innovation (fiber optic [as opposed to copper wires]) to create change that moves faster than the problems change creates.” (Ramo, 2004, p. 12) Measuring the rapid and widespread change thus produced poses another challenge, which is met by side-lining classic indicators of development such as GDP per capita and prioritising quality of life; development is chaotic and has to be managed as such. (Ramo, 2004) This notion is based on the recognition that in development policymaking, the consequences tend to be unpredictable – an issue that Western development practices seem to have stubbornly ignored for long periods of time with dogmatic and universalised approaches to development such as the structural adjustment programmes. The Chinese way then is not to try to assure predictable outcomes of a one-size-fits-all solution somehow, but instead to formulate and implement policy case-by-case in a way that allows for processes of learning, adaptation and, in the worst case, scrapping and starting anew. Importantly, due to the principle of non-interference, these processes of policymaking, trialling and learning are not outsourced to China in

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Sino-23 African cooperation, but remain the charge of African policymakers. While the extent to which this policy space is made productive use of may differ from case to case in practice, in theory it certainly appears preferable for African policymakers to maintain manoeuvrability and the ability to learn from mistakes and successes in this way.

3.4.1 Allegations of Chinese Neo-Colonialism

Chinese engagement on the African continent has been met with much scepticism by Western politics and academia. For instance, during a 2006 trip to Nigeria, the foreign secretary of Britain at the time, Jack Straw, stated that he found Chinese activities there similar to those of the British 150 years prior. (Junbo, 2007) Hillary Clinton, as the then-Secretary of State of the US, made a similar comparison in a 2012 speech held in Dakar. (Haslam et al. 2015) Western press has chimed into the critique as well, for instance the Economist describing China in Africa as a “rogue donor” (‘A Ravenous Dragon’, 2008) This narrative of Sino-African relations painting China as a new coloniser of Africa is still

considered dominant by many scholars. (Maru, 2013) The Chinese quest for resources in Africa, most importantly oil and gas to satiate a rapidly growing energy demand as well as metals for its manufacturing industry, is a major factor that has evoked comparisons to the colonial systems of resource extraction. (Brookes, 2007) Certainly, obtaining these resources is a Chinese priority, and it is clearly visible that China goes where these resources are available. For China, access to markets and key strategic resources are very important contemporary factors in shaping its African engagement, and more recently the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has unified these endeavours in an overarching global strategy. (Looy, 2006; Bräutigam, 2010) This primarily economic agenda entails widespread granting of concessional loans for infrastructure developments, the creation of transportation and communication linkages as well as the maintenance of stability in their African partner countries. (Vaidyanathan, 2019) However, a closer look at Chinese investment volumes in Africa by sector shows that their interests are by no means restricted to just resource extraction: While mining makes up for 31%, in part due to the costly but important supporting infrastructure financed by the Chinese, construction takes 16%, manufacturing 15%, business services 5% and other investments 13%, showing a much more diverse portfolio than the neo-colonial narrative would suggest. (Edinger & Pistorius, 2011) These

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24 numbers indicate that rather than simply extracting raw materials, the Chinese want to create business in Africa, which is something colonial powers were never after. (Bräutigam, 2010) The resource-extraction narrative is further countered by the fact that there is almost a balance between exports and imports between China and African countries, (Edinger & Pistorius, 2011) a state of affairs that is again in no way comparable to the one-way street characterising colonial extraction systems. Furthermore, albeit in a more obvious vein, the Chinese principle of non-interference in local politics stands in stark contrast to colonial rule. With these arguments in mind, it appears a lot more reasonable to speak of a Sino-African interdependence, with widespread Chinese investments across Africa indicating a lasting commitment, than of a neo-colonial resource-grab. Now, having explored the Western development paradigm and the rivalling Beijing consensus, the final section of this literature review will turn to African agency, which is of paramount importance both in the

management of cooperation with donors as well as in forging a path towards homegrown development.

3.5 African Agency

African agency in International Relations as well as Development Studies has received a degree of scholarly attention, however not as much as one may expect. There is a wider set of IR literature, including that on ‘small states’, which seeks to approach the matter from the ‘bottom up’, however these insights provide only a degree of guidance for an analysis of contemporary African agency. (Clapham, 1996) A number of studies focus on the colonial period and its aftermath (for instance Lonsdale, 2000), which provide a useful backdrop for analyses of the current state of affairs and are also utilised in the present thesis. However, as Brown (2012) points out, speaking of African agency in general must be done with caution due to the risk of over-generalisation, and thus requires a flexible approach that recognises the complex interplay of the country-specific structures from which agency arises as well as those within which agency can operate. Such an analysis must foreground African politics, substituting the frequently asked questions on how external powers have shaped a supposedly passive African state for one that investigates how African states have been able to operate on as well as in the evolving international system. (Brown, 2012) This can be done not by naively denying external impediments, because these certainly exist and are

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25 meaningful, but by paying careful attention to the mutually constitutive relationship between agency and structure.

An important argument that has frequently been made by scholars writing on African development and agency is that the aid practices of Western donors beginning in the 1980s, especially those designed to instil good governance by attaching conditionalities to loans, have essentially denied African agents the ‘policy space’ they would need to meaningfully formulate their own agendas and engage in productive policy experimentation. (Oya, 2008; Mkandawire & Soludo, 2003) As discussed above in context of the Beijing consensus, policy experimentation and development by trial and error constitutes an important part of the Chinese development model, in appreciation of the fact that such policies tend to have

unpredictable outcomes. Indeed, in the 1960s and early 1970s, African states deliberately and actively enacted policies that produced, given their point of departure, impressive

developmental progress in terms of economic growth and the improvement of physical infrastructure, which was arguably a greater accomplishment than donor-led efforts managed to produce beginning in the 1980s. (Cheru, 2009) Perhaps it is a stretch to claim that these fairly successful early measures were successful exclusively due to the greater policy space of African policymakers at the time, but they certainly demonstrate that there is no reason to believe that foreign experts should per se have better answers to Africa’s developmental issues than its own leaders. Further empirical evidence in support of the developmental benefits of a state having the manoeuvrability to confidently enact national policies comes from countries such as Taiwan and South Korea, where proactive, even interventionist state policies concerning the market and industrialisation produced tremendous development in the

second half of the 20th_{century. (Park, 1990) Back in Africa, following the 1970s,}

development of African nations came to be something enacted externally and from above, and many of them became entangled in a web of debt, conditional aid and unequal trade systems, largely stripping African policymakers of the policy space that appeared to produce promising results in the 1960s. (Cheru, 2009) Since the 1980s, the discourse of Western development cooperation has evidently evolved, but the relationship between donor and recipient, typically described with terms such as ‘ownership’ and ‘partnership’, still leaves little doubt that the African states are recipients in Western-authored development projects, of which they are expected to take grateful ownership. (Six, 2009) While there are certainly some lessons to be learned from failed Western aid policies for all involved parties, such learning is arguably much more meaningful and useful for the agent that was actively

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26 involved in all steps along the way, most importantly the design. When this step is handled by an exterior actor, it can be expected that learning on the inside is compromised.

In academic discussions on Africa and issues such as foreign aid, development and international cooperation, there is often a tendency to focus on the side of the donors and non-African actors as dominant and agenda-setting, at the expense of recognizing African agency. Studies of Sino-African cooperation are no exception, where whatever degree of African agency that is acknowledged is typically confined to the state. (Mohan & Lampert, 2013) Furthermore, such studies generally opt for an international scope, focussing on the interaction of state actors from both sides, where the African side is normally composed purely of state elites. (Mohan & Lampert, 2013) To a certain extent, this choice of scope and focus can be argued to be both reasonable and pragmatic: elites on either side are certainly the primary driver of Sino-African cooperation and studying their interaction can unveil important political dynamics. Nevertheless, what is discussed by these few and powerful actors evidently has tangible consequences; their decisions play out ‘on the ground’ within African countries, and there may be significant dynamics and interplays of power and influence here that cannot be captured by simply looking at elite actors. (Carmody et al. 2012) Indeed, Mohan and Lampert (2013) find that “at a variety of levels, African actors have negotiated and even shaped Chinese engagements in important ways – and in so doing have carved out more opportunities than is often recognized for their own benefit and

advancement.” (p. 93) As Brown (2012) argues more generally, focussing on agency enables an analysis that focuses on African state politics as an object worth studying, which

importantly differs from the standard way that African IR has often been treated.

Furthermore, a normative argument from a postcolonial perspective can also be made here, in that there is a pressing need to pay attention to Africa’s own voices on China and its

influence, forbearing the often-inherent notion that when Africa engages with ‘external’ actors, this must be malign or misdirected. (Mohan & Power, 2008) Furthermore – and as

mentioned previously – this thesis takes the stance of Mkandawire and Soludo (2003) that

thinking and doing African development is ultimately the obligation of Africans, even if others are of assistance in the process. In approaching China from an African perspective, this thesis will thus call into question the hegemony of the Western model and its inherent suspicion of any other approaches, and it will explore how the Chinese approach may importantly challenge the western model.

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27 At this juncture, the question arises: how do we approach the study of agency in African IR? Brown (2012) usefully defines four broad categories of agency: first

intergovernmental and sub-regional bodies (such as the African Union, the Southern African Development Community or the East African Community), second national states, third state-based actors and fourth sub-state or non-state actors. He importantly notes that using the term “African agency” (Brown, 2012, p. 1891) in the singular can be problematic in the face of the enormous variety found on the African continent. However, he argues that writing about singular ‘Africa’ as one can be justified where it is intended to signify “a collective international actor; (…) a collection of states with (in the ‘broadest of sweeps’) a shared history; and (…) a discursive presence, used by both Africans and outsiders, in international politics and policy.” (Brown, 2012, p. 1891) This thesis will make use of the term mainly in the latter sense of discourse and will then abstain from referring to African agency in general when turning to the case study of Tanzania.

Due to this thesis’ focus on Tanzania as well as its explicit effort to not constrict its attention to state elites, special attention is given to Brown’s writing on the agency of sub- and non-state actors. Certainly, they cannot be viewed in isolation from state elites as they make up the constituencies to which elites must, in some way or another, respond. (Brown, 2012) Beyond this, however, they also importantly take part in direct interaction with international actors operating on African soil, shaping the way in which international policy and cooperation take shape ‘on the ground’. (Brown, 2012; Carmody et al. 2012) This role is growing increasingly more significant due to many international organisations pursuing approaches of bottom-up development as well as due to the growing perceived importance of the so-called “‘new’ ‘security’ issues of environment, health and migration” (Brown, 2012, p. 1893), the addressing of which frequently gives rise to either contestation or cooperation by non-state actors on the ground.

Having thus concluded the literature review, the focus will now turn to the methods employed to find answers to the present research question.

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4. Methodology

4.1 Methods

The methods chosen are intended to provide answers to the research question: In what ways may Sino-Tanzanian cooperation create space for alternative and Tanzanian conceptions of development?

To this end, the methods must be capable of addressing the different elements contained in this RQ. Major forms of Sino-Tanzanian cooperation will be identified and analysed from the perspective of Tanzanian developmental agency. To achieve this, instances of cooperation will be dissected in an effort to find potentials as well as challenges and hazards. Further, the challenges to the Western development paradigm posed by China’s involvement must be identified and these challenges must be situated in the context of different Tanzanian actors. Potential resulting opportunities or constraints on their agency in progressing development will then be discussed.

The method chosen is of an interpretive nature. The majority of this will take place through analysis of documents, which will be analysed using Uwe Flick’s (2014) guidelines for qualitative content analysis. He describes a useful step-by-step methodology (Flick, 2014, p. 324-325) that this thesis will gratefully utilize: First, material is defined, determining which sources and which parts of these sources are relevant for answering the research question. Next, the situation in which the source in question was produced will be analysed, considering questions as to how the source was produced and who was involved in the production. For this thesis, this step will also contain postcolonial considerations such as to what extent the source may be based on discourse with colonial origins. The following step is the formal classification of the material. Then, the direction of analysis is determined,

answering the question of what the researcher actually wants to interpret out of the source. The resulting research question is then further differentiated using theory. The analytic

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4.2 Data Sources & Collection

This thesis will aim to answer the RQ using a range of secondary data sources including policy documents, journal articles, academic books, media and press items as well as working papers.

4.3 Research Design: Single Case Study

The research design chosen for this thesis features the investigation of a single case study. Much of the research done in political science uses a comparative design across two or more cases for the sake of greater generalisability, but for several reasons that approach was deemed less useful here than focussing on a single case. For one, a single case evidently allows for greater depth in analysis. For another, the benefit of better generalisability from two or more cases is lessened by stark differences between African states as well as the Chinese engagement with them; isolating any confounding variables becomes very difficult. Furthermore, agency as theorised by Wight (1999) is thickly embedded both structurally and temporally, making it highly context dependent. This makes comparison across differing contexts difficult, and due to the majority of IR scholars studying Africa focussing

exclusively on state actors, (Mohan & Lampert, 2013) this niche of study is argued to be in the stage of hypothesis production rather than hypothesis testing. As Hans Eyseck

convincingly argued for the case of individual case studies: “Sometimes we simply have to keep our eyes open and look carefully at individual cases - not in the hope of proving anything, but rather in the hope of learning something!” (Eysenck, 1976, p. 9)

In this spirit, the present thesis will aim to contribute to existing research by producing context-dependent insights on the specific case of Tanzania.

In terms of the case choice, Tanzania was selected for a few reasons. After its

independence, president Julius K. Nyerere decided to pursue a path of socialist development that made the country particularly interesting for early Chinese cooperation. (Moshi & Mtui, 2008) Thus, the Chinese have been active here for some time, with major infrastructure projects such as the Dar es Salaam national stadium and the Tanzania Zambia Railway to show for. More recently, the then newly elected president John Magufuli halted an ongoing Chinese cooperation project for the development of Bagamoyo port, indicating that there is

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30 controversy to be studied in terms of Sino-Tanzanian cooperation. Beyond this, Tanzania has had adverse experiences with structural adjustment programmes, which could mean there is scepticism with Western development cooperation as well. Also, as Brazys and colleagues point out, Tanzania is an excellent case to study the interplay of different donors, partly also because “Tanzania is one of the few countries in Africa where the history and scope of Chinese engagement is roughly comparable to that of the World Bank.“ (2017, p. 4) Among others, these factors make it a promising case to examine more closely.

4.4 Limitations

There are certainly drawbacks and weaknesses of the method proposed above. As already discussed, generalisability will be very limited by the scope on a single case study – drawing conclusions that are necessarily valid beyond Tanzania will not be possible. Another limitation concerns data on the Chinese side, as the author is not able to speak or read

Mandarin and many documents do not get translated. Furthermore, there is a general lack of publicly available data on Chinese foreign aid activities by the Chinese government. (Grimm et al. 2011) This means a greater dependence on secondary and tertiary literature in this area. To some extent, the language barrier limitation also applies to Tanzanian media items, which may be written in Kiswahili. A further limitation stems from the author himself: While postcolonialism stresses the questioning of hegemonic knowledge and discourses, much of my own education and upbringing is, to some extent, based on just the knowledge that is to be questioned. While some of this can be compensated for by mindful and critical thinking, eliminating such bias entirely may prove challenging.

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5. Findings & Analysis

This chapter shall seek to critically examine a range of significant Sino-Tanzanian interactions in practice, analysing them to find to what extent they are beneficial for Tanzania, both immediately and in terms of space created for agency, and how Tanzanian agency has shaped these interactions. Beyond this, constraints, limitations and potentials of Tanzanian agency in regards to future interactions will be discussed as they emerge from the analysis. Initially, large physical infrastructure projects will be discussed, as their

construction is one of the main modes of Sino-African cooperation. Next, the focus will turn to agricultural cooperation between Tanzania and China. Then, cooperation in the sector of information and communication technology (ICT) shall be analysed. Throughout this analysis, important differences to and clashes with practices of Western donors will be highlighted and discussed in their repercussions for Tanzanian agency. Beyond this,

recommendations for African agency shall be compiled, following Kinyondo’s (2019) insight that while China has a specific strategy for their interaction with every African state, the African states tend to have less of a coherent strategy in their approach to China, and devising one would certainly help their prospects of maximising benefits from cooperation and forging a path towards homegrown development. These recommendations are reiterated and

discussed in greater depth in the conclusion section following the findings below.

5.1 Infrastructure Projects

In assessing potentials and pitfalls of the practice of Sino-African cooperation, for several reasons a key field of analysis lies in infrastructure projects. For one, infrastructure developments are seen by African leaders as indispensable to their development agendas, typically more so than the ‘soft infrastructure’ that traditional donors often focus on, and China has overtaken the World Bank as the continent’s leading partner in hard infrastructure projects. (Kinyondo, 2019) Tanzania, due to its strategic location on the East African coast as well as its stable and peaceful political climate, has been attested the potential to become a maritime trading hub of the region, provided it creates sufficient infrastructure. (Markowitz, 2017) China has garnered a reputation of being rapid in rolling out such projects, typically much faster than Western donors, making them very appealing to African leaders especially

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32 under pressure of election cycles. (Kinyondo, 2019) Evidently, quicker implementation comes at the cost of thorough environmental and social auditing, which, in line with China’s principles of non-interference and absolute sovereignty, is seen as a decision for the African states to make. In this point, Sino-African cooperation importantly differs from that with Western donors, who typically place much emphasis on auditing and the like. It must also be reiterated here that Chinese infrastructure developments are not charitable exercises; they typically serve to facilitate Chinese strategical considerations around resource extraction and trade, or at the very least, they bring profitable contracts to Chinese contractors in a move to export some of the country’s enormous overcapacities. (Vaidyanathan, 2019) Also, it has been alleged that the massive loans necessary to finance large-scale infrastructure can steer African nations into a Chinese debt trap, which can force these nations to yield degrees of sovereignty, often in the form of control over parts of the created infrastructures. Sri Lanka has been cited as an international instance of this debt trap, whereas in Africa Angola

frequently serves as an example – the debt trap problematic will be discussed in greater depth later on. (Kindyondo, 2019) Another interesting perspective on infrastructure projects focuses on the interaction and competition effects that arise between Chinese funding and western, typically World Bank-led funding.

Clearly then, infrastructure developments in cooperation with China must be

considered critically, carefully weighing benefits and risks. The following sections shall seek to assess Sino-Tanzanian cooperation in infrastructure, primarily discussing the Bagamoyo port project as a central case but also considering the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.

5.1.1 Bagamoyo Port Project

In 2013, Tanzania’s then-president Jakaya Kikwete and Chinese president Xi Jingping signed a $10 billion agreement for the development of a deep-water port in the coastal town of Bagamoyo, an hour’s drive north of the economic capital Dar es Salaam. (Hursh, 2019) The project was meant to create East Africa’s largest port of the kind on an area of 3000 acres, with plans including the construction of an adjoining special economic zone as well as a connecting railway to establish a regional trading hub, and it was to be handled by China Merchants Holdings, the country’s largest port operator. (‘How the dream…’, 2019) For the Chinese, the project represents an important part of the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, a global

Sino-Tanzanian Cooperation: a stepping stone towards Homegrown Development?

A Master’s thesis in Political Science, International Relations