2008/09/09 Door Opener 229 German chiefs of foreign missions from all over the world meet at this year's ambassador's conference that began in Berlin on Monday Sept. 8. The conference will focus on the poverty-stricken, resource rich African continent.[1] The Foreign Ministry has announced that the meeting, which is to a large part confidential, will be discussing the "Natural Resources in Africa" as well as the continent's "interwoven global interests". Jean Ping, Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union will be in attendance, as well as Kermal Dervis, Administrator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Kofi Annan, former UN General Secretary from Ghana. On Tuesday, Sept. 9, around 900 representatives of German companies, keen to expand their business spheres, will be on hand to provide details to and to consult with the ambassadors. They can serve as " 'door openers' to government levels and for the collateral support for commercial projects" writes the Foreign Ministry. With their help it will also be possible to successfully enter onto "difficult foreign markets".[2] Already Double This is the kind of help needed by German firms above all in Africa. As Beijing's Ministry of Trade reports, Chinese-African trade is incessantly booming and setting new records. According to the report, in the first semester of 2008, the trade volume reached US $53.14 billion (37.25 billion Euros), a rise of about 40% in comparison to the first semester of 2007. Extrapolated, this would be more than US $100 billion at the end of the year - a level that had been predicted for 2010 at the earliest. The growth in volume is for both export and import.[3] This places the African-Chinese trade volume at double the German-African volume, which reached 33.3 billion Euros last year, a mere 0.8% rise over the previous year. A practical stagnation [4] in spite of Berlin's considerable efforts.[5] The German backlog is rapidly increasing in relation to the East Asian world power, that just a few years ago lagged far behind Germany in its access to African resources. Countermeasures Berlin is taking countermeasures and is particularly aiming at the energy sector of the continent. Berlin is interested in electrical power production and distribution, business branches in which German companies are competing for contracts. But its interest is focusing above all on the exploitation of energy natural resources. The confirmed oil and natural gas reserves in Africa have increased 15% over the past decade, whereas the world average remains at 8%. And African nations are far from exhausting their exploration.[6] Germany is taking this situation into account and is directing its attention principally toward Algeria,[7] Libya and Nigeria, the most important oil producing countries of Africa up to now. Berlin has an "energy partnership" [8] with Abuja, deemed to assure palpable German influence over Nigerian resources. Current projects are also aimed toward Angola, whose resource sector has been rapidly growing over the past few years. Angola joined OPEC in 2007 and is now producing more oil than Nigeria that had been the most important oil producer south of the Sahara. Very Important Angola's significance in global politics was exposed in a strategy paper published last year by renowned US government advisors. They write that Angola is one of several countries worldwide that are "important suppliers of energy to the United States." In fact, Luanda ranks sixth among Washington's oil suppliers - with tendency rising. "Few African countries are more important to U.S. interests than Angola" says the US strategy paper.[9] The authors are referring not only to Angola's resources, but also to its significance for the entire West African Gulf of Guinea. The oil and gas deposits of this region (Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Angola) should cover a large portion of US future needs, because Washington is seeking to reduce its dependence on Middle East resources. Angola has an important role to play in this plan. The nation not only has immense resource deposits, since the end of its civil war, specialists have seen it as a discrete aspirant to attain political hegemony in South West Africa. Rivals This is why China’s strong influence in Angola is taken very seriously by the West. Beijing had been active in Luanda at an early stage and secured important positions for itself, including access to oil. Today, Angola supplies 35 - 40% of its oil production to each of the major rivals, the United States and the People's Republic. Similar rivalries can be expected in two other states with important resources in the region of the Gulf of Guinea, in Equatorial Guinea and in Nigeria. Both are supplying not only the USA (Nigeria is exporting more than 40 Percent of its production to the United States) but to a growing extent also China. Angola has become China’s largest oil supplier. The two world power’s direct competition in the resource rich West African states gives reason to foresee future Western offensives. Ever Stronger Berlin is taking the initiative in this volatile situation. In Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea German energy companies have already gained a foothold,[10] in Angola, following massive political interventions, business activity is increasing.[11] As far back as 2004, Berlin provided Angola's president an "economic advisor," Erich Riedl (CSU), a former parliamentary state secretary in Berlin's Ministry of the Economy. Since then, Riedl has been insistently campaigning for German companies, that are now beginning to become established in Angola. Within a short period, the German - Angolan trade volume has risen to half a billion Euros. Even the German volume of investments is rapidly growing. A German entrepreneur is under contract from Luanda to supervise Chinese companies doing infrastructure work,[12] while Berlin is engaged in trying to make Beijing look bad. The German government is now supplementing its activities with the opening of language teaching centers and a branch office of the Goethe Institute in Angola. Enhanced cultural influence is meant to reinforce the bonds between Angola and Europe. Premonition With these initiatives, the German government is not only strengthening the German position, but also the position of Western powers in this resource rich region on the Gulf of Guinea. A premonition of the conflicts that could ensue, if the respective countries do not go along with Berlin's and Washington's demands, but rather show a larger preference to Beijing, can be gleaned from a look at nations, where this is exactly the case: Zimbabwe and Sudan.[13] |
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