"The Democratic Republic of Congo is about the size of Western Europe and has an estimated population of 65 million. But it is one of the least developed nations in the world, with less than 2,000 miles of paved roads. In 1999, fewer than 15,000 houses had land-based telephones, and no more than 10,000 people had analog mobile handsets.
...Once, after equipment providers declined to send engineers to Congo during a particularly dangerous time in the country's unending civil war, Conteh encouraged a group of citizens in Kinshasa to collect scrap metal and weld it into a cell-phone tower."
and New York Times about Chinese investments and immigrants in Africa
"Many African officials have told me that they feel that the West is too paternalistic, that it talks down to Africans, it doesn’t respect their culture and their values and their needs. The Chinese don’t have the same kind of colonial baggage that a country like France or England has in Africa, so they can have a relationship that seems, on the surface at least, quite a bit more egalitarian"
and a slide show on Chinese business in Africa.
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