The Chinisation of Africa: The Case of Angola

(1249) Renato Aguilar and Andrea Goldstein The relationship between the Asian Drivers and Angola has attracted an attention only paralleled by the one surrounding interactions with Sudan. Three closely related perspectives are important. First, the rapid expansion of the Chinese and Indian economies has sustained the world price for oil, of which Angola is the second‐largest producer in sub‐Saharan Africa. In the process, China has also become Angola’s third‐largest trading partner, with a sizeable trade surplus favouring Angola. Second, from an international financing perspective, China’s keen interest to diversify the portfolio of assets in which to invest its huge international reserves is only matched by Angola’s need to find alternatives to normal and concessional sources of international financing, from which it is excluded due to the lack of progress in negotiating with the Bretton Woods institutions. Third, all these issues must be understood in the broader and possibly more complex scenario of the political economy of the relationship between Angola and the world. Because of the country’s size and control over huge oil resources, the growing presence of China in Angola has reverberations across the rest of Africa. And Angola has also joined OPEC in late 2006.