The authors contend that China’s ambitions in Africa are grandly geopolitical as well as economic. As Jacob Wood, a Shanghai-born housing developer based in Africa for more than 30 years, tells them: “I’m going to be honest with you, China is using Africa to get where the United States is now, and surpass it.”

On the one hand, the Chinese invest heavily in infrastructure projects and create hundreds of thousands of jobs in return for being granted oil, mining and other concessions by African nations. According to the authors, Chinese “discretion and humility” are a breath of fresh air against a backdrop of “colonial arrogance” by France, Britain and other nations. In addition, the authors say, “Africa welcomes any competition that shakes up the Western, Lebanese and Indian business monopolies.”

Despite the recitations of socioeconomic and cultural disruptions and workplace abuses, the authors reach what may be an overly sanguine conclusion. They contend that “China’s arrival has been a boon for a continent adrift,” adding that the Chinese have “given Africa a real sense of worth, as much in the eyes of Africans themselves as in the eyes of foreigners.”