"pushed out of the puff puff market"...

...these are the words used by the US embassy press attache to describe the current "cold war" between china and the US in central/west africa to my class yesterday.

as i have said before, along every major road (and most small roads) one finds clandestine and informal vendors selling everything from pay-as-you-go phone credit to shoes to the emerging market of puff-puffs (or beignets for the laymans). stable jobs are very hard to come by in Cameroon, so while selling puff-puffs (generally about 15 cents a piece) is not enough to live by, it is at least something. the only thing.

the rumor goes that chinese expats are starting to take the "jobs" of these delicious sweet bread vendors by offering their own puff puff carts, powered by their own puff puff vendors. Cameroonians are being pushed out of the puff puff market!

PUFF PUFF

now, according to our gentlemanly press attache (he is just enough southern to be charming but not so much to be scary, witty enough to be smart but old timey enough to be relatable), there is a reason for this unseemly breach of bread workers decorum. as we all have heard, africa is not a very rich place. thusly, it is often the target of western development projects . the famous ones here are the chad-cameroon oil pipeline and international loans and their partnering IMF restructuring plans. in general, to receive money or building projects, some sort of promise must be made by the cameroonian government. maybe they have to be more transparent, maybe they have to make a plan to empower some group, or maybe they have to privatize something. in general, these changes are called structural readjustment plans. some say they are ineffective and neocolonial while others say they are the only ways that things like environmental protection and human rights can be protected. no matter your take on the issue (i think it is at best a potentially well intentioned effort to meddle) thats how the US rolls...anyway, the point is that aid never comes from europe and the us without strings attached.

china, on the other hand, does not require anything for their loans. in fact, they have a history of giving loans and grants to corrupt african politicians in order to get access to africa's rich resources.

"they work with corrupt leaders in order to help their own economy"...

our press attache said this with a straight face. they are, according to the embassy, only concerned about their own financial benefit...so they don't make the cameroonian government (currently something like the 175th poorest nation) do anything (or in his words, "the right thing") in order to receive....a LOAN.

the attache goes on to say that with their building plans, the chinese will ship in laborers to do the work for the building projects rather than use local laborers. then, when the building is done the chinese laborers stay in cameroon.


and steal jobs.

and sell puff puffs...


this is how we are to understand the alleged cold war between the US and China, and to be honest, with his buttery smooth presentation, it actually made sense at the time.