Author sets the record straight

Will Africa Feed China? by Deborah Brautigam, published by Oxford University Press. [Photo by Mujahid Safodien/China Daily]

Brautigam says her aim essentially is to set the record straight in what is a highly readable and engaging account.

"The reality is that most Chinese involvement in agriculture is still largely limited to aid projects such as the 25 or so agricultural-demonstration centers. I don't think these are part of a long-term plan to dominate African agriculture. They are just a part of South-South cooperation."

Brautigam looked at 60 Chinese agricultural projects in Africa and only the leaders of one that was involved in growing rice in Xai-Xai in southern Mozambique said they had any intention of exporting to China in the future.

"Even they said there was no way in hell they would be able to do it now because it was just not cost effective to export rice back to China when it could be sourced from places like Vietnam where the shipping costs were lower," she says.

China imports mainly cocoa, sesame seeds, rubber, cotton and tobacco from Africa but the bulk of its food comes from developed countries like the United States.

"Around 95 percent of the corn imported into China comes from the US and Canada with soya beans coming from Brazil and Argentina."

Brautigam, originally from Madison, Wisconsin, started out as a China expert and spent time studying in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

She then took an interest in Africa and emerged as the doyenne of China-Africa experts when the world's attention was drawn to this new geopolitical relationship at the first Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit in Beijing 2006, which was a spectacular affair with its processions of people wearing African dress and 9-meter-high posters of giraffes and elephants

Her 2009 book, The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, was a minor publishing hit.

"It was what they call a crossover book. It sold in bookstores and to regular people as well as academics," she says.

She denies she has practically invented her specialist subject, insisting there were a number of important earlier writers on China's political links with independence movements Africa from the 1950s.

"There were some wonderful people before me such as George Yu (another US academic) who wrote about the Tanzam railway (the China-built track that links Tanzania and Zambia) back in the 1970s."

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