The Chinese presence in Black Africa has grown enormously in the last five years and is triggering a dangerous new Great Power scramble for strategic positions.

In the long run, its effect may be to repartition the continent into new ideological and economic spheres of influence. It is forcing the Great Powers to focus aid on areas of strategic value rather than on regions of greatest human need. It is also compelling communist and capitalist powers to overlook racial and social injustice in order to preserve their strategic stakes.