The director of the Senegalese News Agency, Mamadou Koume, is in Beijing at the moment. He had some interesting things to say. In particular, this really struck me:

"In Africa, we have always cooperated with the West. We have not progressed much. We have received aid from the West and donations from International financial institutions, which was always accompanied by many conditionality and diktats, whereas China has decided to take her own route," Koume told Xinhua.
There's this too:
The West-controlled media "say bad things about China. I think some of them are driven by jealousy. This is because China has taken the first position and is very dynamic in her relations particularly with the African continent. The West is feeling jealousy because China has come to compete with them in Africa. And we, the African, feel like the forms of cooperation that is being done by the Chinese, will give us a lot of autonomy," Koume said.
The first thing to note is that there's no exaggeration in the statement that China is competing with the West for influence in Africa, and the sentiment expressed here that China is winning is entirely accurate. China now has more influence across the continent than any other nation or international organization. As Koume points out, many African countries love Chinese "aid" because it comes without preconditions. You want to spend it on a palace for the king (I mean "president") then you just go right ahead. A few crates of AK-47s? Heck, we'll sell 'em to you at a discount. That's the cynical western perspective (which has some validity).

Now let's look at it from another point of view. Koume is absolutely correct when he says that African cooperation with the West has done little for Africa. The West has poured billions of dollars into Africa with little to show for it. Doesn't that tend to suggest that the Western model of aid is fundamentally flawed? Western paternalism hasn't always been very useful either ... just consider malaria and the West's reluctance to let them use bucket-loads of DDT, even with the full knowledge that it would save far more lives and prevent far more suffering than any side-effects of the DDT itself. No, you can't use DDT because that would be a Bad Thing, and we can't let you do that! Of course it doesn't mean that Chinese aid is going to do any better, but it does mean that China is going to do a lot better in the new Great Game that's shaping up in Africa.