now as africa is stepping up its development some countries are getting ahead while some are not but nonetheless there's enormous foreign interest and i'm thinking of the united states and china do you like the term great game well i've well i think there's been an enormous interest in africa since about the one nine hundred eighty s. with the introduction of the neo liberal policies of the international monetary fund and world bank ever since then i think the situation in africa has become one in which which essentially we have not a neo colonialism we don't have a new colonialism what we have is essentially occupied territories territories occupied by the large corporations and supported by the international financial institutions and the aid agencies and so what they're there to do is to reap as much benefits as they can avoid as much tax as they can profiteer. the price that is paid by most africans is massive dispossession of

their land massive unemployment massive decline in in in standard of living and more hungry people than there ever were that's the situation which which africa currently face now clearly there are competitions between the different international powers for africa's natural resources and what is missing out of that element is the voice of african citizens about well they need it's all very well having investments in africa but if the country or the people of the country don't benefit from it then it's no real no good to anyone ok those shareholders ok jenny if i go to you in washington now my would you agree with an assessment and a new occupation not even using the term neo colonialism not imperialism occupation go ahead. well of course not i don't agree with that. portrayal of africa at all i think that in fact we've seen

a new dynamism significant growth in these economies a rising middle class african civil society has grown has been more active it's holding its government leaders accountable to a larger degree so i think that the projection of africa especially over the last decade has been nothing but positive there obviously are areas in which we have you know backtracking zimbabwe would be one case in point but overall i don't think it's a picture that can be simply reduced to an economic argument you know there's been dynamism on the political front on the civil society front on economic engagement the rise of the rise of the middle class and that all speaks to. more complex picture than one that is reduced to economic ok robert if i can go to you in london where you. progress or backtracking. growing economies growing independence or

occupation as we heard earlier in the program. well i really can't think of any african country that is being occupied by corporations and i've traveled all over the continent and it seems to me that while there are one or two places where nobody's in charge like somalia pretty much everywhere else the governments are in charge like they are in most other countries now many of those governments are of very inefficient governments but by and large they've gotten a lot better over the past twenty years and when the dealings between corporations and african governments it's absolutely the african governments who call the shots if you go to somewhere like angola it doesn't matter whether you are an american oil company a british one or a chinese one you have to deal with the angolan government nobody disputes that they own the oil and if you annoy them they kick you out of this is happening to people for from both sides. and so today they're striking the bargains now. jendayi frazer point i think

a lot of things have gotten better in the past ten years you've seen inflation has come down average incomes have gone up and while it's maybe a bit premature to say that there's this massive new african middle classes i think the the world bank did recently they're talking about a rise in the number of people who are earning between two and four dollars a day which is you know it's better than it was but it's still not what you'd call middle class in most places so i think it's a much more subtle and nuanced thing than that's going on and then what pharaohs suggests i think the idea that corporations conquering the place is a bit of a caricature ok fellows it looks like it's two against one here you want to defend yourself go ahead hold no proof no problem in getting you through. you know well let me smell me say my words but the reality is that there is massive amount of land ground there's more land listeners across africa than there ever has been

there is more hunger in africa than has ever been more b. there's more unemployment than there's ever ever been more importantly it's not just those physical resources that people have been dispossessed of but the reality of the last thirty years in africa has been that increasingly our governments are more accountable to the international financial institutions the defense the befits the need has been need as comedians of the world and they are no more come to blows to the international agencies than they are to citizens now i don't call that democracy what i've see that has is this and the company led to the dispossession of their material livelihoods has been the dispossession of their political. gains of independence and i think you know it's all very well saying there's been. huge growth rates but who is benefiting from those growth from those growth rates in fact the division between the rich and the poor has actually increased

dramatically over the last thirty years and as for the world bank and their apologists who talk about you know the middle class is beginning with two dollars a day a pound a day have you tried living in nairobi on a pound a day these guys think this is the middle class is there must be be on some of the planet i'm afraid ok gen if i can go to you i mean there's a there's a lot of talk about foreign investment in africa and the chinese have gone there in an amazing super amazing way and there's one estimate by the year two thousand and twenty though the chinese will have over over two trillion dollars in investment there the united states will have across many three hundred billion dollars i mean this is when i get to the term the great game i mean the the chinese see this is a very very interesting place to invest because there's a lot of baggage that they have to carry when they deal with the african leaders there's they're the same that would say the values gap that is always bench in

between maybe like the united states and china so-called because i think there's a lot of things that western countries ask of they deny people on the ground certain rights so what do you think about that i mean is it easier for their africans to borrow money and get investment from the chinese than from the west because of the baggage. well i do think that the chinese have made a focused effort to invest in africa to increase their trade with africa mainly because they need to natural resources a fuel growth back home that is given african countries more options because they don't simply have to rely on the west and the conditionality that often comes with western assistance and with western loans and so i do think that there is in that sense it's a better environment for africa in terms of the choices that they have but i would also say that there i do agree that there is a bit of a values gap in that somewhat as whether china you know there's

a policy of not interference in the affairs of african countries some would say that that's not an interest in the welfare of african people and i don't want to make it seem like the west is great and china as you know doing bad things in africa that's not true it's more complex you know the west the united states and western european countries have a terrible history in africa in terms of some of the cold war policies and certainly the period of colonialism before that but there is this sense of which the west at least is more aligned it seems with civil society in african countries today then china has been you can see that of course in sudan you can also see that when the chinese were trying to export weapons into zimbabwe and civil society and workers in angola in south africa refused to offload those weapons going into zimbabwe and so it is there is

a sense to which the west is more aligned with the democratic forces in africa ok robert if i could go you know i'm not sure that that's not really that's really you could i wanted to get away with that i mean just look at the downfall of mubarak and ben ali in egypt in tunis. respectively i mean those people who were funded to the hilt by the western governments these were despotic regimes with with a strong military and they've been overthrown not by civil society not by these these these new new missionaries of development the ngos but rather by a mass uprising and it hasn't been confined only to egypt in tunis here we've had libya we've had got bombed been in brooklyn a far so swaziland ethiopia uganda and so on even in south africa the recent south african police report demonstrated that they they recorded over five thousand

uprisings in south africa per year over the last three years now that is an indication of the degree of opposition of of citizens not just of not just civil society or people are losing those iran scary are no solution more chrissy ok brother john boehner before we go to break robert before we go to break i had look at south africa's a democracy the government there is chosen by the people in free and fair elections but yeah there's lots of people who are locally upset with local corruption and things either outburst the arguments or sounds like another egypt waiting for something tater to be overthrown seems absurd i didn't say i did already see this juncture i'm going to jump in we're going to go to a break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the future of africa stay with r.t. . if. you can.

live i've. come up. empty. it.

was. ok. welcome back to crossfire guy people about to remind you we're talking about africa and its future.

ok and robert i want to go back to you in london right before we went to the break we were down there i discussion flared up about the values gap that like the people as a term that some people like to use i mean it's been brought up that you know the west likes to say that it likes to to support democracy and civil society no i've already heard on this program the west is really backed with some very vicious very vicious the dictators have been overthrown lately so i you know one has to wonder or a one or understand why african countries will look to china because there are no strings attached or very few strings attached go ahead. well i mean the west baggs democracies but it's not always the top priority and certainly if you're talking in the middle east where you have the issues of oil then you have the issues of israel it tends not to be the top priority quite often stability is preferred china is a dictatorship local trade and back democracy anywhere and you wouldn't really expect them to i think the important point though is that when you have both

western companies and chinese companies both the western governments and the chinese government competing for influence in africa and that puts power with the african government because they can play the two off against each other and they can say to western firms if you don't offer better deals maybe the chinese will and they can do the same to the chinese and that's what they're doing you see them doing it in a number of countries in angola and sometimes you see you know the chinese think that they've they've they've got something sewn up like they will back a dictator like year in sudan and they think that will give them permanent access to the oil wealth there and then suddenly sudan saddam splits in half and they're finding they very rapidly having to make friends with the the enemies of the guy they've been propping up so they're running into the same kinds of problems that the western government videos it's interesting going back to point you made earlier maybe we can all agree with robert b. that it's the people on the ground that suffer the most. well in indeed what i was

saying about the uprisings that have been happening across the continent is a reflection of the discontent that is brewing and great and increasing across the continent but looking at china i mean i think you know people are often rather sort exaggerated about about the actions of china if you look at foreign direct investment the united kingdom and usa are the leading foreign direct investment investment in in the in in africa followed behind by by france and by germany and all the asian tigers put together are still much smaller proportion of what germany germany's foreign direct investment is so you know i think and that's not because they're nice it's because they came to the show late they already all the oil fields all the mineral resources were already taken by the time china was ready to come into africa so they are being very smart in in the in offering all kinds of deals and offering offering loans which can be repaid in

commodities and so on so they're being very smart about what what what it is but i'm i'm less convinced i mean i think the point is quite right that robert makes that that there is a room for negotiation but i'm surprised at how few african governments have actually use that leverage in negotiating i think angola certainly certainly has one or two other countries might have but it in general it is not been the case and in fact they are strongly dissuaded from that doing so by by they are alliance with the big corporations and they're there and the u.s. and european governments as well as the japanese government agenda if i go to you in washington it's very interesting point to our do african governments have enough leverage actually to be able to negotiate a deal to their advantage or are they continuously continuously at a disadvantage when it comes visibly foreign investors and i mean east or west.

well african governments have tremendous leverage to negotiate obviously they are in control of their countries and their resources i don't think they'd be cooperation to control everything and i think that the sort of broad brush picture that's being painted is in correct of africa africans and african governments as victims of some system that's external to them they have responsibility they are making deals certainly there is it is true that i think the international financial institutions have tremendous soy in these countries the world bank and i.m.f. but to the degree that they get their macro economic performance in place to the degree that they're more responsive to their own citizens into their own population that gives them the leverage with all sides extra little to the continent so i don't see african governments african leaders or african people and citizens as somehow victimized by the international system i think that they are fully in

charge and can play this game of back balancing our interests balancing of interests and that you know they have tremendous leverage that they could utilize if they would do so ok robert if i go to you if you were an african leader and he wanted to get foreign investment are needed money would you go to the i.m.f. or would you go to the chinese which would you prefer if you put yourself in a position of being an african leader of the i.m.f. doesn't do foreign investment they are math rescues ok let's say where you rescue our rescue ok rescue by the chinese say they have ten billion dollars in the economy ask questions. well i think what you would do is you would say what's the problem we're looking at if the problem is you want lots of people to come and do business in your country then you wouldn't pick either or you'd say we're open for business for both chinese and the americans and anyone else who wants to come through on that they abide by the law and the basic minimum standards

and they're always going to be occasions where that doesn't happen and most african countries south of congo you'll find that chinese sentiment is a pretty big political factor now that's not because they're the most influential it's because they knew i mean chinese investment in africa was almost nothing fifteen years ago and now it's about one hundred twenty billion dollars a year so it's just suddenly happened really quickly and with it there's come a very large number of chinese people into africa we don't really know how many but it's certainly in the tens of thousands probably in the hundreds of thousands and there's a guy at the african development bank said but more chinese people have come to africa in the past ten years than europeans had in the past four hundred years so this is a big change and it's a very visible it's something to lose yourself to your i was going to just have to go to a place like you have a look at a place like nairobi in kenya where i come from there are more was soon more and more whites europeans and americans sitting there making

a buck today than there have been in any time in kenya's history and that's true all over africa in fact that doesn't quite literally wrote i just i don't really. have the chinese are tiny in proportion to that. and certainly you don't see the scale of of s.u.v.s or four wheel drives and so on that you that you see in the cities of africa which are all western in fact. you could see them through the nature of what is what is happening in africa everyone says that you know it's open for business. but if it's open for business who benefits from that most of the profits made by these companies who are investing in africa are are exported many of these companies and there's been recent reports by the tax justice network which have demonstrated that that huge of molds even the un d p talks about twenty

three billion dollars over the last year being being siphoned out illegally from from africa from all kinds of tax evasion schemes like offshore banks and so on i mean the scale of that is going on is unprecedented doubtlessly those there's a lot of that going on but you seem to be under the illusion that the the most important thing that a business does for a country is to do to make profits there and leave them there i mean that's that's not what they do it all and that part of that but if you're looking at the horizontal at the top the difference that has been made by mobile phone companies in africa has completely transformed the way that the africans communicate with each other and the way that they do business with each other and if you look even at you know completely the traders who are not even slightly interested in the welfare of africans may still do a great deal of benefit to them you see in zambia for example since food chinese

traders came into the mobile into the markets there the price of things like to check in whole of these are these are series one of the disorderly goings on it will generally have the new benefit to the people who so i want to ask a question we will come up gentlemen gentlemen please please make sure everyone's in here. there seems to be two different points of view here africa is exploited now more than ever before or on the other side of the ledger it's actually speaking it's getting its act together and making progress where do you stand in the between these two stools of this program. i certainly agree that is getting its act together and it's making more progress that said i do think that part of their progress has to. b. to increase the number of jobs to reduce the income gap between the very wealthy and the very poor to actually make agriculture benefit the farmers and the population as a whole rather than export the food externally and giving her large tracts of land

to external companies or governments so that they can export food to their population so i think that it's a very complex picture but what i the bottom line is that africans are more in charge of setting the agenda and africa they have the rules they are responsive more responsive to their populations traders in africa do not want to compete with chinese workers and so they are holding their governments to account businessmen in africa do not want to compete with bad deals given to chinese companies or even western companies that are very opaque so they're pushing for greater transparency and that's because there's a dynamism within african populations and civil society in sub-saharan africa in particular i agree that north africa stability was more of a priority i've always said that there was no democratization and that's why north africa has collapsed so significantly you do not see mass uprisings across africa what you do see is populations demonstrating within the framework framework of

greater rule of law and greater democratization it's not one hundred percent but it's certainly more than it was ten years ago and so i'm on the side more progress . if you last more last ten seconds guys that are going well climate climate she's living on but the reality is that poor people in africa there are more hungry people there more lungs people whose great to unemployment that's the sum total of the achievement of course thank you very much. we've run out of time many thanks to my guest today in oxford washington and in london and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t.c. next time. remember cross talk rules. and. soon.

top stories on our t.v. and nato admits it launched the airstrike that killed nine civilians in a tripoli suburb while british taxpayers weary of reckless spending are handed the bill for three months of bloody stalemate. gets a grilling in vienna members of the international nuclear watchdog gathered to look at ways to avoid another crisis people there don't feel safe even kilometers away from the exclusion zone. every head of state wants a second term but it's the people who have the final word so says president medvedev he still wasn't announced whether he'll stand again but didn't rule out a faceoff with prime minister putin. of russia and other places scored over the death of her child from pneumonia after she failed to poland and instead

turned to the internet for. four pm here in the russian capital you're watching r t good to have you with us now nato has admitted its forces killed up to nine civilians in a bungled airstrike on a poor neighborhood in tripoli anger over the incident on long libyans was heightened when the country's health ministry announced that the intervention had left more than eight hundred civilians dead so far. no reports now from the capital tripoli and you may find some of the images disturbing. mohammad heard his extended family used to be one of the biggest in the neighborhood and they tears rolling out five thousand years by his father one of his brothers a sister and her own family mohamed shows us the picture of little jumana he's

taken on his mobile phone just days before he pulled her dead body from modern day three here i woke up when i heard an explosion she started to piece of the roof fell on me and i ran immediately to see how my family is and many of the dead my mother survived another brother is in a coma and we don't know when or if he will recover that had is that not three days they live in this agreement they strict entry fully it's home to many our aging compete most from one family this is just a regular six quarter why does the populated built up area this is what used to be there had his house the three story buildings are reduced in ruins in just moments after being hit in a missile strike. mohammad's brother who says they will never forgive or forget what nato has done to them destroying their lives and hands if they should take responsibility for their wrongdoing and.