Abstrakt
Africa as a continent was for several centuries regarded as a European sphere of influence. After decolonization, the former colonial powers retained their political, economic, and military ties with Africa.
Decolonization also increased the US influence on the continent. Partly directly due to strong American support for the process of decolonization and the linkage of pan-African movement to American intellectuals of African origin, partly indirectly through the so-called Washington Consensus, the set of neo-liberal principles designed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as a recipe to tackle the persisting economic crisis in developing countries.
Recent unexpected and sudden rise of China (and to a lesser degree rise of other Asian countries) in Africa raised concerns about the possible change of existing patterns of cooperation in the region. In fact, growing Asian presence in Africa is neither unexpected, nor sudden.
Trade contacts between Asia and particularly Eastern Africa dates back as to ancient times with its peak in the medieval times. Political contacts increased during the African anti-colonial struggle and continued in next decades.
Thus, Asian states (I am going to focus on China, India, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan in this text) are present in Africa continuously for some sixty years. Obviously, the Asian presence changed from time to time according to internal dynamics both in Asia and in Africa, and according to external (global) dynamics as well.
What we see currently in Africa is thus another change, which promotes the Asian presence to another stage. However, this does not necessarily brings with it any fundamental overturn to African external relations.