On the outskirts of this run-down African capital, the new Sino-Congolese commercial centre boasts row upon row of Chinese-made television sets and microwave ovens. Nearby stalls sell T-shirts and footwear at prices below that of the second-hand European goods on sale in the teeming African markets outside.

“The big advantage we have over traditional African street markets is that people can walk around and see several different products on sale in the same place,” said Joseph Wnuata Kiana, the Congolese manager of the centre, which opened in 2000. “People like the choice, though not all Congolese like the competition, and the Chinese hire people too. The Indians are the only ones who can compete with them and so far they have done very little here in concrete terms.”

The number of Chinese businessmen on flights in and out of Africa’s main cities has grown from a trickle to a torrent. About 800 Chinese companies now work in Africa. One estimate puts the number of expatriate Chinese workers at 78,000. Their influence is seen everywhere. In Kinshasa — and many other African cities — twice-weekly flights via Nairobi, Kenya, are advertised to Hong Kong and Guangzhou. A new Chinese restaurant has just opened.

The presence is not always welcome. On the other side of the broad Congo river, in Brazzaville, a local paper complained recently that the city was in danger of becoming “Shanghai City” and accused the Chinese of imposing “commercial imperialism”.

In South Africa the Chinese presence has also coincided with a large increase in criminal activity, with rumours of Triad gangs fighting for the lucrative abalone-poaching business and related drug and prostitution rings.

On the other hand, thousands of Africans who were previously unemployed are now working again in Chinese-run projects. In Angola a new multimillion-dollar airport is being built outside the capital, Luanda, and the Benguela Railway, Angola’s only access to the sea, which was destroyed by decades of conflict, is being reconstructed.

The Government stands to make enormous gains from the project. The new port could become a regional outlet and compete strongly with Durban in South Africa.

Many younger Africans fear that their leaders’ well-known greed will make them susceptible to illegal payments to gain favours, which will once again backfire on the continent. “Why should we go overseas and get qualifications and come back and find our own governments have brought in Chinese engineers?” said Bernard Kituyi, a Kenyan working as a contracts and pricing Officer of Shell Oil Products Africa. “Africans can build their own roads.”

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