Trade-OffsIs China the key to Africa's development?

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Spake now communicates with a Chinese partner by e-mail and phone and plans to return to Guangzhou this June to arrange more shipments of garlic and, perhaps, tomato paste.

Though the trade balance between China and Africa is heavily weighted toward Chinese exports, Africa's exports to China grew by 48 percent annually between 1999 and 2004, according to the World Bank. Just as it has grown ravenous for Sudan's oil and the DRC's gold, China is discovering Tanzania's natural resources. In the southern coastal region, Chinese companies are buying millions of dollars' worth of indigenous hardwood logs to feed China's construction and furniture industries, which supply companies like IKEA with products. Nonprofit organizations that monitor the trade in illicit goods have tracked the flow of ivory from and through Tanzania to China.

But as China's investments grow increasingly hard to resist, the fast-flowing trade is ripe for corruption in weak African states like Tanzania. A report released in May 2007 by TRAFFIC International, a joint program of the WWF and IUCN—the World Conservation Union, found that Tanzania had lost $58 million in timber revenue to corruption, in part because the majority of the timber sales were illegal. Most of the benefits from the trade were lumped among a select few groups with little trickling down to the communities living closest to the forests.

One way to ensure that local communities benefit from the logging is to process timber products on African soil before exporting them, says Rogers Malimbwi, a professor of natural resources at Sokoine University in Dar es Salaam. Tanzania's timber sector is beginning to build mills to process the timber, but much of it still leaves the country as intact logs, he said.

Meanwhile, African consumers are also beginning to experience the ugly side of trading with China, a lesson Americans learned all too well last year with the massive recalls of Chinese-made dog food and toys. In October 2007, counterfeit electrical equipment from China caused fatal electrical fires in Dar es Salaam, the country's commercial capital, according to the Confederation of Tanzania Industries, which called for a crackdown on counterfeits.

"The Chinese medicines are making people sick, and the electrical wires are not safe," said Spake. "But China is giving the African people a chance to do business and make more money, and for some people that means being able to buy food to eat."

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