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THE SHEER scale of China's investment, trade and aid programmes in sub-Saharan Africa makes them one of the most important inter-regional developments in the world today, not only economically but politically as well.

China is set to become Africa's largest trading partner, mainly through the exchange of raw materials for cheap manufactured goods. Many African states have benefited from Chinese partnership agreements in which huge infrastructural projects are provided in return for access to oil, copper, nickel, agricultural land or logging, with little of the conditionality imposed by their post-colonial benefactors. China has now become a real factor in African states' foreign policy concerns, competing for influence with the United States and European powers.