While Europeans are concentrating vehemently on Asia and more or less cold-shoulder Africa, China is expanding with great enthusiasm systematically its position in Africa. Just to name one example: Zimbabwe. When South Africa was willing to give a loan to the bankrupt dictator Mugabe, the Western world was in uproar. Not so in China. Quietly and without being noticed, China got involved and secured once again existentially important commodity resources as trade-off for the loans to Mugabe. Today it is commodities China is securing in Africa, tomorrow it will be the sales markets. Zimbabwe is not an isolated case.

It is high time for Europe to give up its sparse activities, to accept Africans as future business partners instead of treating them like pittance recipients. Africa is a rich continent. Africa offers interesting markets for the future. In Africa a young and highly educated generation is growing up who are in no way inferior to anyone, not to the Asians or Europeans. Africa offers interesting possibilities for investments and as already mentioned, Africa’s riches in commodities make them into a continent with a future.

He who sees Africa as a miserable shack at the edge of the global village is mistaken. Poverty and AIDS can be beat, not with handouts but through putting our economic perspectives into the center of our activities.