China In Africa: Partnership Or Opportunist?

China's vastly increased involvement in Africa over the past decade is one of the most significant developments in the region; it appears to contradict the idea of international marginalization of Africa and brings significant economic and political consequences. China's Africa interests are part of a recently more active international strategy based on multipolarity and non-interference. Increased aid, debt cancellation, and massive Chinese-African trade with a strategy Chinese focus on oil, have proven mutually advantageous for China and African state elites. By offering aid without preconditions, China has presented an attractive alternative to conditional western aid, and gained valuable diplomatic support to defend its international interests.Increasing numbers of Chinese companies are developing connections in Africa with the aim of increasing trade between China and the African continent, this relationship between China and Africa has not happened unnoticed but the discussion in the West is not well informed. Questions about how to deal with this development and its consequences are being raised. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap and presents an overview of Sino-African relations, China's aid programme to Africa and the state of trade relations, with special emphasis on natural resources and the export market for Chinese products and investments in Africa.The goal of this thesis is to give brief explanation to the readers about how the different theories of interactional relations interpret the Sino-African relations in their own way. It also will try to explain why the Sino-African relation became so strong in a short term.The methods the writer used to write this thesis are, extensive literature reviews like journals, books, periodicals etc., the other method is different interviews with different individuals and diplomats. The third method the writer used is case analysis; by analyzing a lot of cases the writer found a lot of facts about the Sino-African relations.Finally what the writer has found out and concluded is, the fact that there is question whether we need to create a new theory to explain the Sino-African relationship or not, because the existing international relations theories have a lot of problems to explain or fill our the gaps between the relations.