The four nation visit to Africa from 4th to 9th May by Li Keqiang was his first since becoming Premier of China last year, and follows on from the earlier visit by Xi Jinping as President last March. Chinese senior leaders spending time in Africa is not a new phenomenon. The first visit was by Jiang Zemin in 1996, during which he established with African partners the Forum for Chinese African Co-operation. Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao were also frequent visits to Africa.  What has changed in the last 18 years in the footprint that China now leaves across the continent.

　　What most captured the interest of the press was, invariably, the size of the aid deals and economic cooperation agreements that Li announced.  In a speech to the Organization of African Union  Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Li pledged new credit lines to African partners of US10 billion, and an additional USD2 billion to the China Africa Development Fund. This sat alongside USD20 billion offered last year during Xi Jinping's visit, and a USD10 billion financial contribution announced to a wildlife protection scheme.

　　American journalist Howard French, in a recent book on China in Africa, `China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants are Building a New Empire in Africa' (Knopf, New York, 2014) plots out a series of journey's French made over the last two years in Africa, looking at China's impact. Two things strike French wherever he goes. The first is that Chinese influence in Africa is most marked not in the large, state owned companies and their investments and involvement in the economy.  While these are prominent and growing, the real surprise for French is the number of Chinese he finds who have migrated of their own free will to some of the toughest and poorest parts of Africa in order to undertake business and seek opportunity.

　　The second feature French notices is how strategically important Africa is becoming not just for for China's huge resource needs, but also as a potential market for its goods and as a place with large amounts of undeveloped arable land that could be suppliers of foodstuffs for a China looking at increasing challenges in feeding its citizens.

　　Premier Li stated explicitly when speaking on the first leg of his African tour that China did not have a colonial history in Africa, and that it came therefore with none of the burden of maltreatment, exploitation and broken promises that European or Americans often found were placed upon them,   For an audience of African countries, many of whom became independent of colonial rule only in the recent decades, this is an important message to use to convey solidarity politically. In the 1960s, China liked to present itself as the leader of the Third World countries, as they were known then, standing against the superpower poles of the USSR and America. The revolutionary context of that era has gone. But the core message remains similar. China and its African partners are developing countries seeking to have some role in a world where the rich nations have tried to control most of the main levers of power.  This remains the basis of their solidarity.

　　There is one vast difference now, however. And that is simply that China and Africa in their relationship can speak as places now where the key story is not about poverty and failure, but the opposite. Most predications show that future global growth will be largest, and expand fastest, in Africa and China. This gives these areas, one a continent and one a country, extra leverage. Their solidarity is now no longer based on being disadvantaged, but on being places where there is much room for development and new growth.

　　French's account makes clear that Africa presents tough challenges even to the most experienced businessman or government partner there. Li Keqiang this time visited Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya and Angola. These are all major countries, but between each there are significant differences in terms of wealth, development of infrastructure, and human wellbeing. The per capita GDP in 2012 of Angola was over USD8,000. But for Nigeria, this figure was a mere USD2500, and for Kenya  and Ethiopia USD1000. Having a pan-African strategy of engagement that can handle all these differences between countries would be impossible. In the last two decades, China has had to learn some hard lessons in Africa, and been educated about the fundamental  and stark differences between countries in the continent.

　　Some of these were simply about becoming more realistic about conditions and opportunities in Africa. The lack of human capital and technology in many parts of Africa ranks high as a problem here. Chinese companies interviewed by French justify their using labour brought from China because of the inability to find qualified people locally. This has given some Chinese investments the reputation of being solely by Chinese for Chinese, with no contribution to the local economy. Mines and other important resource investments in particular have attracted attention because skilled or management positions have been allocated largely to Chinese labour.

　　There have also been the challenges of navigating local politics. Steven Chan, an academic at the London School of Oriental and African Studies commented in a book from 2012 on the Morality of China in Africa that while China did not have the same colonial taint as Western countries in Africa, it was in danger of being seen as a similarly threatening outsider if it did not try to work in partnership with locals in the various countries of interest to it to pursue its interests. Chan in particular refers to the isolation of some Chinese companies and government representatives in Africa who do not wide their networks to include more diverse contacts to education and inform them about local political and economic issues.

　　Li has set a benchmark during this visit of doubling trade and investment by 2020. This target seems entirely realizable, if only because in the last few years statistics in this area have burgeoned. In 2009 China became Africa's largest trade partner with a trade volume of USD of 198 billion in 2012. This is expected to grow to USD380 billion by 2015. It is easy to see how much this trade matters for politicians and policy makers in Beijing who are always careful of over dependence on the EU and America market. There was also USD17 billion of Chinese direct investment into African countries, This too has grown from almost nothing over a decade before.

　　It is clear that Africa will continue to be a place that matters to China because it offers diversity away from the economic poles of the EU and America, and means that China has an area where it can exercise a new type of influence, based on its status as a developing nation, but also as one that is now investing heavily overseas and also seeking new markets for its good, and new sustainable sources of energy, resources and foodstuffs.

　　What Africa gets from China beyond the financial support is also pretty clear. In many of the countries Li visited there is critical lack of infrastructure, and undeveloped industries and public services. As a developing country that has been immensely successful, many African countries look to China as a source of new ideas about how to face some of their own problems. They also see in China a country that does not come to them preaching about how they need to get better, adopt different forms of government and fall into line with other Western standards.

　　There are ways in which China still has much to learn in Africa, and it is interesting to see if the major non African players, from the European Union to the US and China, might be able to find a way to sit down more collaboratively with African partners and try to pool resources and efforts to address some of the immense challenges that African countries still have. Chinese aid money will do immense good, if properly directed, and there is little doubt that, for all their complicated and controversial history, many European countries have important lessons they have learned about what might work best in Africa that they might share with China. Setting up this sort of forum for discussion would be useful despite the ways in which outsiders can sometimes be very protective of their relations and activity in Africa. As Li, showed over the last week, he is the leader of a major economy who is able to speak in Africa in a way that is free of the colonial taint of other similar sized economies. This is something that is a useful asset in thinking how Africa might be assisted in facing some of its huge problems in the years ahead as it tries to become as prosperous and dynamic as China.

　　Professor Kerry Brown