I've been living in Dakar for four years. This documentary shows very well how things are changing in Dakar. Not just chinese people do businesses by selling chinese products but also locals. Every plastic item you can find in western Africa is made in China, starting from plastic bags of any colour and shape.

This was an extremely disturbing video. The Chinese that they interviewed seemed thoughtless in regards to the effects that they are inflicting upon certain regions in Africa. If what the Senegalese business department (or whatever the official title of that organization was)says is true about them living in their businesses, not opening up bank accounts, and only shopping from one another, then they truly are partaking in a colonial relationship of sorts.
Again, this seems to be a very disturbing situation and is one that seems likely to only get worse.

I found it ironic that the owner of the shoe store was complaining about cheap imported Chinese shoes, and showed some shoes that he sold- including some Italian-made!

Otherwise, I am divided over the issue, it could go either way for the development of Africa.

For sure politicians should change laws concerning emploiement and taw system but I also think that many seneglese traders are becoming richer since when chineses started doing business in Senegal. In fact many of them, instead of buying products from arab countries, now go to China for purchaising all kind of items.
I also think we will be able to see mixed couples of chinese and senegalses very soon as it is, in some ways, for libense community. For sure they have to adapt to the local lifestyle and start to integrate. That will take decades maybe. This past winter I saw a chinese man in Dakar holding a senegalese or chinese-senegalese baby and I felt surprised because I never thought before that something like this could happen in Dakar.
What I am more worried about is the quality of products coming from China. It is true that they are cheap and they don't last. The same happens in Europe. But in Senegal they don't have any facility for recuperating or recycling and that means more and more pollution and environmental risks. All the bushes and the sea of west africa are full of plastic bags, cheap slippers and plastic bukets.

Well, first the Lebanese, brought in by the French colonialists, dominated the economy, soon the Chinese, with all their pre-existing advantages will too.
As long as the elite profit, not much will change.

I co-sign all the comments that have been made already regarding this issue. In addition to the economic impact of Chinese immigration to Senegal (and by the video's inferences, to other African nations), there are sociological/cultural ramifications that should be addressed.

The Chinese interviewed in the video appear to be insensitive to and dismissive of African culture (for instance, the comment about people doing business moving slower in Senegal). Also, the Chinese people interviewed exhibited racist or at least prejudice attitudes toward Black people (examples from the video are the man who shared that he was afraid to go outside when he first arrived because of all the Black people; the young people in the nightclub joking about people having dark skin color, and the couple with a daughter born in Senegal commenting that they were afraid that their daughter was turning into a "little Black girl" because she starts dancing when she hears music.

I'm interested in knowing if there's public education in Senegal. I suspect that Chinese children will attend schools that the Chinese people living in Senegal set up just for their children unless there are laws prohibiting such segregation. I also wonder are all children born in Senegal automatically citizens of that nation, and are some of these Chinese emigrants applying for Senegalese citizenship? That has long term implications,some of which could be quite positive. Maybe then (at least over time) members of the Chinese community would begin to act in ways that demonstrated that they cared more about Senegal as a nation, and also about (other) Senagelese people. Now it seems as if all they care about is getting rich quickly in Africa.

It doesn't take much insight to project that there will continue to be tensions in Senegal between the Chinese and Black Senagalese as long as the Chinese emigrants view Senegal as just a relatively easy place to make money. Also, it doesn't take much insight to project that there will continue to be tensions between the Chinese and Black Senegalese as long as the Chinese continue to segregate themselves. Interracial schools could be one avenue out of that far reaching calamity but that's probably too much like right.

What's obscured in this documentary (and thread) is how the West and especially America's hostility towards the Chinese in Africa powerfully shapes media discourse about this topic to begin with.

Namely, America and Europe view Africa as their traditional sphere of influence and are extremely hostile to what they perceive as the Chinese encroaching on "their territory."

What the Chinese are doing is to offer an alternative to the West's brand of "development" known as the Washington Consensus, where America-imposed economic shock therapy, structural adjustment policies, and austerity measures create havoc that makes the impact of Chinese immigrants in Senegal pale in comparison.

Indeed, the title of the documentary itself "The Colony" would be a much more apt description of what the American Empire and its European allies are doing not only in Africa but much of the world.

In Africa particularly, American and Western militaries are colonizing the continent behind a variety of pretexts ranging from humanitarianism to terrorism.

Led by its "first African American President" Barack Obama, America has bombed Yemen, attacked Somalia, continues to balkanize Sudan, and expanded AFRICOM everywhere--to name just a few examples. The agenda? Making Africa safe for … American and Western capitalist plunder.

Needless to say, Senegal is yet another country that is a recipient of American military "aid."

It's very predictable that these broader issues are swept under the rug by what is euphemistically called the "free press" in general and self-styled American progressives or intellectuals especially.

New Colonialism: Pentagon Carves Africa Into Military Zones
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/new-colonialism-pentagon-carves-africa-into-military-zones/

AFRICOM Ain’t The Peace Corps
http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/africom-ain%E2%80%99t-peace-corps

AFRICOM: America's Military Foot in Africa's Doorway
http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/africom-americas-military-foot-africas-doorway

Paul Kagame: America's Genocidaire in Central Africa
http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/paul-kagame-americas-genocidaire-central-africa

Oh my god, I was struck by the comment that if his daughter didn't speak French or Chinese, then there would be "no hope" because she'd be "just like a little black kid".
Argh, argh, argh.

I'm more than a little bothered by the video and the comments above which take the video at face value with my primary concerns being 1) subtitles and 2) context.

1) ALL of the interviews with locals who are living the situation, both Chinese and Senegalese are not in English. They are primarily in Mandarin and French. I can't speak to the French translations, but for the Mandarin translations, errors abound. Some are trivial: the nickname of the little Chinese girl is so fancifully wrong that I almost admire whoever was able to pull that out of his/her brain. And some affect the tone of the whole piece: the part in the karaoke club (which the reporter calls a nightclub BUT ISN'T) where the guy is subtitled as saying "Shit, this isn't even as good as rural China!" HE DOESN'T SAY THAT! He actually just says "So rural!" Notice that he didn't compare it unfavorably to rural China, only noted that it was less cosmopolitan than he expected, and did not even curse. Another part is when the lady in the market is buying food for her restaurant and she is speaking to her observations on the differences between Chinese and Senegalese ways of doing things. The subtitles have her saying "That's very frustrating too," which implies that she's frustrated with something external (ie. the Senegalese) that isn’t the way she wants it to be. BUT SHE DOESN'T SAY THAT EITHER! She actually says "So in this aspect, I feel so much, so much pressure." The implication in THIS sentence being that SHE is the one who feels pressure from her environment because SHE has different habits from the normal way of doing things in Senegal.

There are actually a great deal more subtitle translation errors that I don’t have the time to go into. Whether these were an accident of a translator who was incompetent, moronic, or dishonest or the true intention of a sensationalizing media machine looking to feed the fires of tension, I can't say. I can only say that the translations were incorrect to an uncomfortable degree.

2) The piece provides no context as to either Chinese or Senegalese culture, or the immigrant mindset for that matter. For example, the scene in the karaoke place where the Chinese people are joking about skin color, that scene is framed as casual racism in the news piece, but in a Chinese context, it's an issue of colorism more so than racism.* Colorism within the Asian community is not often talked about, but the statistic is 40% of Asian women use skin whitening products, so obviously, it's not a fringe issue. Going in with THIS knowledge, the scene read to me like the Chinese people (all of whom were much darker than "ideal") were self-effacingly using themselves as the butt of jokes with comments like "I don't know what to do! My skin becoming darker and darker!" (read: I'm becoming less and less attractive by Chinese beauty standards) rather than the black Senegalese.
As for the Senegalese, why is it that the piece has all the Senegalese interviewees saying lines that sound ripped out of the US 2010 Tea Party Handbook? "The question is where the Chinese are here to destroy our industries, eliminate our craftsmen, or wreck our economy." If I just replace "Chinese" with "Mexicans"...why hello white American rationalizations for racist immigration policies, so glad you could join us in Senegal. Yes, I am aware of the post-colonial context of Senegal with makes the situations not analogous, even if the comments APPEAR analogous. And yes, the post-colonial context does make the fear and the anger more sympathetic than those of Tea Partiers. But none of that SHOWS UP in the video.
As for the immigrant insularity, well, I believe all minority communities are guilty of insularity to some degree; and more often than not, it's a reaction to the majority culture rather than evidence of ill will. People (mainly white people) have suggested to me that groups like Society of Women Engineers, United Khmer Students, and Afrikan Student Union (or even the Black church or HBCUs) are inherently insular and exclusionary. And arguments can be made for this stance as this is a form of self-segregation; and after all, no colleges prohibit black students form attending now, so shouldn’t all HBCUs close down as defunct institutions? Of course not, I would have to wave away truckloads of historical and modern social context to take this stance. The point is, I believe that it is vital for marginalized communities to have their "safe spaces," where they can be away from curious gazes, intrusive questions, judgments about their "American-ness," and also where they can associate with people who actually understand their background instead of just tolerating it as well as try to reconnect with a culture, THEIR culture, that the mainstream is constantly, and effortlessly eroding. Which brings me to the issue that in Senegal, the black Senegalese are the majority and the black Senegalese culture is the mainstream; it is the Chinese immigrants who are the minority. More importantly, the immigrants are lay people, immigrating without encouragement or support of their government. Immigration is fundamentally different than the process of colonization, and if the difference isn’t drawn, one might as well say that the Arab community in Argentina is somehow a colonizing force. More dangerously, it could be said that the influx of Polish immigrants into the UK is causing the "British identity to disappear" (quotes because I’m half-sure the Daily Mail has filed a copyright on this phrase by now) or that Mexican immigrants are destroying America.

In conclusion, the assumptions that Chinese immigrants don’t care about Senegal, are racist against black Senegalese, are selfish, are insular, are exploitative, are a colonizing force, are whatever are in themselves premature and dangerous to make because 1) we are drawing our conclusions from a 20 minute news video, 2) we are receiving all information on the situation through a lens designed by the news corporation, and 3) we don’t are relying on the news corporation to tell us what is being said onscreen in a language we don’t have access to**.

*Colorism, obviously, has its roots in colonialism and racism and can't be neatly separated, but it's not exactly the same thing (eg. a cocoa skinned African wishing she had the skin of her high-yellow sister is more an issue of colorism than of racism).

**The "we" used is not rhetorical, I include myself as well. I am fluent in Mandarin but not Senegalese French or Wolof, and I too am viewing the situation through the lens given to me by Al Jazeera.

I hope my African brother’s ban together and boycott these Chinese invaders. The Chinese are not friends and they don’t care who they screw. Without government backing these Chinese peasants wouldn’t stand a chance. The future doesn’t look to good for Africa or for Africans abroad.

There is a major sociological issue with how the Chinese and how the Africans interact with each other as well. The Chinese that we saw in this video seemed racist and selfish. And it is obvious. As with America and other continents, China has one goal really and that is economic dominance. We must learn to value our own labor and products of our own labor; buying what is produced from our native land and not what is foreign.