Saved Money or Lost a Continent?Zambia After USAID with Peter Wiebler

Yeah, no, great point, Peter.

Thank you.

And you had alluded to soft power earlier, I recall you, and I believe it was Joseph Nye who cited that concept way back when, right? And the idea and really kind of underpinning of our work, right, is that you're helping out, you're engaging, sharing what we know, and also showing the practical benefits of democratic institutions, strong institutions, transparency, anti-corruption.

So you're hoping that this assistance translates into partnership, translates into relations that end with good trade relations, good bilateral relations.

It's an indirect concept, soft power.

And this new era, if it plays out as such in a more transactional or conditional approach, would represent a huge pivot in for how we practice foreign assistance and soft power.

So thank you for spelling that out.

And I think it leads logically to the next question, right? So also in the opening, we talked about China's role in Zambia, you know, so in...

Right after the assistance is cut in or frozen from the U.S., a half a million HIV test kits get to Zambia, Chinese funded.

Talk to us a little bit about the Chinese cooperation, economic interests, also assistance like we used to implement.

Let's talk a little bit about China's engagement in Zambia, if you will.

Sure.

So I think it's a really important question.

And One thing that many Americans, no matter how sophisticated they are, no matter how well traveled or how closely they follow international affairs and international our foreign policy, let's say

a lot of things.

Many of us don't know that China has been investing in Africa, including Zambia, for decades.

um and and many uh before China's opening to the world and much less before it's kind of uh let's say Ascension to uh economic uh Heights uh and really becoming a a geostrategic competitor to the US um even in the 60s uh it was the Chinese government that uh that actually helped develop along with the Tanzanian and Zambian governments the Tazara Railway, which went from basically the Indian Ocean deep into southern Africa.

That was during the period of Mao.

And so the Chinese, the People's Liberation Army literally helped build that railway.

So that was in the 1960s.

And the Chinese presence has been significantly different from ours.

It's been mostly economic, many loans, which are an area, an issue that's been well covered in the media.

There's been some assistance, and in Zambia in particular, there's a very large Congress hall and conference center, which was built by China aid, literally from the Chinese people, similar to our own agency, Michael.

which USAID's tagline, of course, being from the American people.

So on the assistance side, the Chinese tended to go and tend still to go very much on big infrastructure projects, buildings, perhaps roads, etc.