Has Chinas $20 billion investment in Sudans oil industry paid off?
For many of Africa’s rent-seeking regimes, China’s entrance as a resource-hungry global creditor is manna from the ancestors. Beijing has several unique advantages for Africa, from its role as an emerging power delinked of colonial ghosts to its miraculous feat of lifting over 600 million citizens from radical poverty. Such facts are often cited by African governments to show the dawn of a new “win-win” global order pegged to replace the Washington Consensus. But does Beijing represent change or simply another counterweight, capable of providing unearned revenue financing Africa’s rentier regimes? Much of this is due to the opacity with which Khartoum’s captured state machinery operates, siphoning as much as 40% of total oil revenue through various forms of mispricing. Meanwhile, though the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005 established that 50% of revenues must be remitted to the Government of South Sudan (GOSS), this share is determined not by volume but sales. Khartoum mark
