The New Scramble for Africa

Abstract

Africa is one of the richest continent of the world. The scramble for Africa has been an ongoing phenomenon, however, the intensity of the present scramble have increased multifold. The main aim of this chapter is to explain the new forms and dimensions of the scramble and its implication on Africa’s development. The scramblers are not only Europeans or American nations, but the emerging economies such as China, India, South Korea, Brazil, and Malaysia have also joined the scramblers’ club competing for Africa’s resources. However, the chapter focus on the United States and China. It notes that the present arrangement of the world economic order is creating the developed nations to achieve their imperialistic desires. The chapter provides an overview of the United States and China’s place in the new scramble for Africa. The essence is not basically to access these countries’ contribution in terms of investment and infrastructural development in Africa but to analyze the implication of the new scramble on Africa’s overall development. The chapter, therefore, calls for the entrenchment of development-informed pan-Africanism. It concludes that it is important to secure the relevance of pan-Africanism in development discourse in tackling the development of dilemmas and the asymmetric relations between developed countries and Africa.