Tuesday, December 9, 2014

African Public Opinion on China and the US


africa14
Pew Research Center

What do Africans think about China? How does this compare with the US? I get asked these questions a lot, and I always try to resist responding with anecdotes along the lines of: "a taxi driver I spoke with in Ethiopia believes X about China/the US." The best data we have will be found in public opinion polls. Below is a quick survey of polls I know about. If readers have links to other polls, I'd love to include them.

The Afrobarometer asked a public opinion question on China in 2008 but I don't think they've repeated it. In that survey, 47% thought that China "helped somewhat" or "helped a lot" while 30% answered "don't know". For the US, 54% thought we "helped somewhat" or "helped a lot" and 29% didn't have a response.

The BBC regularly does a World Public Opinion poll (PIPA) asking some comparative questions on China, although their coverage of African countries is spotty. Their survey in 2011 had five African countries, Kenya (73% positive), Nigeria (85%), Ghana (72%), Egypt (55%) and South Africa (53%). All had at least 50% positive rating. Another BBC survey in two African countries in 2011 reported a positive view of the impact of China's growth on their country: Kenya (77% positive), Nigeria (82%). In 2013, the PIPA survey showed positive ratings of 78% for China in Nigeria, 68% in Ghana, and a decline to 58% in Kenya. Their 2014 survey showed a rise in favorable public opinion on China in Kenya (65%), stable in Ghana (67%) and a bit of a positive jump for Nigeria (85%).

The Pew Charitable Trust also includes some questions on China/US public opinion.

I think the most recent Pew survey took place in the Spring of 2013. The table from the US/China question is reproduced to the right. On average, 65 percent of Africans viewed China favorably, and 73 percent the US.

Earlier Pew surveys on this topic seem to have only included one country, Kenya. In 2010, 94% of Kenyans surveyed viewed the US favorably and in 2011, 83%. In the table on the right we can see a favorable opinion for the US of 81%,  In 2010, 86% of Kenyans surveyed viewed China favorably, and in 2011, this dropped to 71% and in 2013, it rose to 78%.

A survey of African stakeholders carried out in 40 African countries by the OECD for the African Economic Outlook 2011 found that emerging partners such as China were ranked as having a comparative advantage for cooperation in infrastructure, innovation, and even health compared with Africa’s traditional bilateral and multilateral partners. Economist Helmut Reisen, former head of research at the OECD’s Development Center commented: “these results are striking considering all the effort traditional donors have put into these sectors.”  

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am perplexed !

When exactly China wants to be in a beauty contest against Uncle Sam?

The Chinese culture with its thousands of years of history, second only to the Jewish culture, knows that the title of being a "beauty queen" is essentially anti-cerebral. It would thus, do everybody a favor if we devote our energy and focus on how to improve the lives of those in the African continent than that silly survey by the BBC

Anonymous said...

While we are on the issue of the beauty contest run by BBC, it would be worthwhile if we take a look at what the Diplomat is saying (but of course, like always, with more than a hint of sour-grapes mixed in)

http://thediplomat.com/2014/12/chinas-foreign-policy-in-2014-a-year-of-big-strokes/

Ti Pu Win said...

Jewish history is not the oldest, nor the longest recorded, nor the richest in materials of culture. I don't know where you got this piece of nonsense. Perhaps from the old testament. One book of dubious historicity. The Black Sea Scrolls are the oldest and they are about Roman times. Tigris-Euphratis culture certain predates Jewish archeology. India's Mohinjodara now predates Sumerians, and the undersea city found at the mouth of the Ganges River is older than that, likely to Vedic times. Chinese archeology shows villages on stilts about 30,000 years old too. The Judeo-Christian myth should not remain in the light of new archeology. Please.

Anonymous said...

Dear Ms. Deborah,

When I read that rebuttal from "Ti Pu Win" my feeling can be described in one word --- "Bizarre"

First of all, no Chinese, and I repeat, no Chinese with sane mind will dare to claim that the Chinese civilization is 30,000 year old

We Chinese are people of a matured civilization, and we know that people from a matured civilization simply do not go around inflating the 'grandiosity' of the Chinese civilization with obviously fake number

After all, if we do not object to that fella's claim that the Chinese civilization has 30,000 years of history now, what is there to stop him from claiming that the Chinese civilization is already 3 million years old??

The second thing that has raised my suspicion, Ms. Deborah, is the name that person used - "Ti Pu Win" - sounds very similar to the Malay language - I do have to confess that I have businesses in Singapore and have traveled to the South East Asian region regularly - and the word "Tipu" in the Malay language means "To cheat"

In other words, Ms. Deborah, if my suspicions is correct, that "Ti Pu Win' is not a Chinese and he left his comment with the the sole intention of discrediting the Chinese

We must call a spade, a spade, Ms. Deborah. If we detect a fake, we must identify it as such