News last month that Russian aluminium giant Rusal plans to invest millions of dollars across Africa on building smelters and seeking new places to mine bauxite provided yet more proof that China is not alone in the scramble for African resources.
Whereas once it was 19th-century European developing economies that fought over African resources, today it is the emerging markets of China, India and Russia. Each in its turn is ravenous for resources and has looked to Africa’s vast untapped reserves of mineral wealth and oil for the wherewithal to fuel their phenomenal growth.
