A journalist colleague of mine, Ms. Dominique Patton, has for the past few months been covering Chinese business activity in Eastern Africa. Her most recent piece in Business Daily (based in Nairobi) discusses Kenya's dwindling tourist figures since the 27 December election, and the drastic impact this is having on the Kenyan economy (approximately 59% of Kenya's GDP is derived from the service sector, of which tourism forms a significant part).
While the Chinese tourist market is much smaller than the US or UK, it is nevertheless and important emerging market. Many Chinese tourists, too, are not tourists in the traditional sense but come to survey market opportunities; many end up staying and making significant investments in Kenya's various industry sectors. 60% of Chinese tourists are, indeed, business travelers.
While general African concern regarding the Chinese speaks to there being 'too many,' it appears that Kenyan concerns may now be of there being 'not enough.' Amidst the plethora of mixed feelings regarding Chinese presence in the country - indeed the continent - it appears that today the prospect of the Chinese leaving Kenya (or not even arriving) is a much more daunting prospect than their being there in the first place. It would appear that Africa needs China more than we (or at least I) might have imagined, and a new era of African dependency may be upon us.