At the end of the Cold War, Russia’s influence in Africa waned considerably and this vacuum was immediately filled by the impatient China. Banking on its gains in Africa, China easily convinced the entire continent that it was a more credible partner than Europe and even the United States which in the eyes of many Africans were merely imperialists and exploiters. China’s rise to the status of an economic giant made it all the more attractive to desperate Africa leaders.
When in 2000, the Forum on China Africa Cooperation was created, it was clear that China had become the center of focus of Africa’s look east. For those in the West who doubted it, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe pronounced it in no unclear terms. On the 25th anniversary of Zimbabwe’s independence in May 2005, Mugabe spoke for Africa when he said. “We have turned east where the sun rises, and given our backs to the West where the sun sets.”
This statement, however true it was, appeared provocative to the West especially as it came from the mouth of Mugabe whom the West considers a devil with a very long tail in Africa. Mugabe was proven right only a year later when 48 delegations of African political and business leaders convened in Beijing at the Forum on China Africa Cooperation. This was not only a humiliation for Europe a a vivid contrast to an earlier EU-Africa conference which was almost crippled from the beginning because of debates about Mugabe’s presence.