KAMPALA - The African Union said on Sunday Africa must turn ever more to China for its development because conditions and checks often stalled the flow of funds from Western nations and the World Bank. Maxwell Mkwezalamba, the AU's economic chief, said Africa must end its reliance on Western money. "For Africa's development and integration we have depended on the Western world -- we cannot continue to proceed like this," Mkwezalamba told reporters. "We need to diversify our partners that we work with and hence for us, working with China is something that we have welcomed," he said at the AU summit in Uganda. China pledged last year to give Africa $10 billion in concessional loans over the next three years and it is pouring money into developing infrastructure in many nations on the world's poorest continent. Some Western nations say China is interested only in extracting Africa's natural resources to feed its fast-growing economy, cares little for African development and supports governments with dubious human rights records. Rights groups say China, which last year imported $6.3 billion of Sudanese crude oil, has failed to do enough to stop bloodshed in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur and has violated a U.N. arms embargo on the region. China denies the charges and has appointed its own envoy to try to bring peace to Darfur. China's Foreign Ministry says critics who suggest China is only interested in Africa because of its energy resources are "erroneous and one-sided".
