Abstract:This article examines the motive behind China's increased activities in Ethiopia in recent years and concludes that it lies in Ethiopia's perceived diplomatic usefulness. If China's relations with many African countries could be described as one of “infrastructure for natural resources,” the Sino-Ethiopian relationship can be described “infrastructure for diplomatic support.” After exploring the nature and scope of Ethiopia's relations with China and highlighting areas of divergence of interest, the article seeks to demonstrate how the convergence of interests between the two countries has ushered in a period of Sino-optimism among Ethiopia's elite and rising expectations among ordinary Ethiopians.

In many cases it was China's longstanding solidarity with several liberation movements in Africa in the colonial period which was later upgraded to bilateral and state-level diplomatic relations in the postcolonial era. However, the twenty-first century has also brought about quantitative and potentially qualitative changes in Sino-African relations which are more complex than what the advocates of stronger Sino-African relations (Sino-optimists) and proponents of disengagement (Sino-pessimists) seem to suggest. The defining patterns of China's influence in Africa are either not yet fully crystallized or they come in paradoxical pairs. The essay spells out the manifestations of these paradoxes and what can be done under the circumstances to improve the African condition. The divergent schools of thought about the possible impacts of China's increased activities in Africa seem not to be totally unrelated to their underlying assumptions about the causes of Africa's unsuccessful modernization. The essay also explores these intellectual issues by focusing on the contradictory dimensions of Afro-Chinese relations.

What is Africa’s place in Japanese diplomatic thought, and what are the driving forces of Japan’s African diplomacy in the new century? The need to maintain continuity in Japan’s post—Cold War Africa policy, leadership style, and priorities of Japan’s prime ministers, as well as broader considerations of the nation’s vital interests, are all relevant factors for understanding Japan’s diplomacy toward Africa in the new century.

In the 1990s Japan changed its prime ministers nine times just in a span of nine years, an extraordinarily high turnover by any standard, and — above all — by Japan’s own. But all the transitions took a characteristically peaceful form. Although fewer changes took place in individual African countries in the same period, the process was invariably less than peaceful and often bloody. Simple observations such as these automatically call to mind a number of questions which, it should be admitted, are easier to ask than to answer. As an African who has studied and lived in Japan for a while, the specific questions I was confronted with included the following. Why does violence mar political change in Africa, but not in Japan? What are the lessons that Africa could draw from Japan’s experience? Formidable questions indeed. Social scientists generally explain change in terms of the nature and the state of political structures and institutions in a given society. In a sense intended neither to dismiss nor belittle the usefulness of this approach, I wish to address the above questions in the eye of a non-specialist primarily from a cultural perspective in order to (a) highlight the less obvious but significant forces which seem to be also at work in Japan, and (b) suggest the lessons Africa could extract from the experience.

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