Nairobi — The year 2006 is remarkable in one big sense. The Africans and the Asians have renewed their cooperation in ways that are reminiscent of anti-colonialism that was at the expense of the West, mainly the Europeans. One of the differences, though, is that the leading countries in each of the continents in this seemingly cooperation have changed. In the 1950s, India and Indonesia seemingly led the Asian continent in this effort and the meeting at Bandung in 1955 symbolised that. In Africa, the leading lights were Egypt under Gamal Nasser and Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah.

In 2006, China appears to be in the lead in Asia while in Africa, it is Kenya and South Africa. The recent summit African heads of State and Government in Beijing, China was symbolic of this change. President Mwai Kibaki was seemingly the leader of the African delegation.

President Kibaki and his Chinese counter part, Mr Hu Jintao, have a few things in common. They both had served as senior political party operatives, both assumed effective control of their countries early in 2003, both are pushy in advancing their particular nationalistic economic agenda.

As a result, both have not shied away from taking decisions at the international level that have ruffled the imperial feathers of those powers and forces that have assumed they have inherent right to decide and to "advise" other countries on what their interests should be. In this effort, Mr Hu is succeeding, and Mr Kibaki is seemingly comfortable.

The apparent growing closeness of the Africans and the Chinese is beyond personalities. It tends to rekindle the spirit of Afro-Asianism that is based on common experience of exploitation by the West in three stages of classical colonialism, neo-colonialism, and post-modern colonialism.

Afro-Asians anti-colonialism collided with European determination to retain empires. Mahandas Gandhi in India called Allied declarations of freedom as "hollow, so long as India and ? Africa are exploited by Great Britain, and America has the Negro problem." And George Padmore and W.E.B Du Bois asserted that Britain was like Germany because it practised fascism in West Africa and forced labour in Kenya.

In the Cold War, Afro-Asians founded the Non-Alignment Movement that refused to subordinate anti-colonialism to anti-communist concerns. India's Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru warned the Americans against supporting British colonialism in the Mau Mau War. Nehru and Nasser attended the 1955 Non-Alignment conference at Bandung, Indonesia, that stressed the primacy of anti-colonialism. Among Nehru's admirers in Kenya was Tom Mboya who dismissed the condoning of colonialism because of fear of communism as "bankrupt". By 1964, territorial colonialism was virtually at an end, except for Southern Africa.

The end of territorial colonialism led to indirect rule in which rulers of new states, either willingly or through coercion, turned their countries into neo-colonial appendages of foreign interests. There then arose acrimonious debates on whether reliance on colonial institutions, and advice from imperialistic forces, was "good" or detrimental. Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong'o went to the extent of suggesting that discarding European languages would help to combat cultural imperialism.

Imperial forces could tolerate debates on cultural imperialism but not Afro-Asian attempt to create a semblance of balance in the actual practice of international relations. In the 1970s the Afro-Asians tried, using Unesco, to bring a balance in the media and in the world economic system through the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) and the New International Economic Order (NIEO). The challenge to the media and the economic systems, two of the instruments used to strangulate Afro-Asians angered the West so much that there was effort to cripple Unesco because it dared to demand equity and to raise questions about international control.

African states have watched the Asian countries such as China, Malaysia, and India seemingly doing very well by ignoring strange demands and advise. That doing well appears to be contagious.

Kenya has in the last four years turned things around by doing its own thing. This has included a change of national attitude from that of dependency to self-reliance. The result is an increase in self-pride.

Kenyans deciding what is important for themselves has led to positive outcomes. These include self-reliance in the national budget so as to ensure that national programmes will not be held back because of inexplicable demands from "donors".

It has meant mounting universal educational programmes in primary schools that will in the future make it difficult for tyranny to harp on the ignorance of the ruled. It also includes devolving financial capacity to the rural areas through the Constituency Development Funds. The success of the CDF has tended to undermine the value of some NGOs that thrive on exploiting rural poverty.

Kenya appears to be happy with its ability to decide its own fate. It has meant that Kenya is free to decide whom to be friends with and to open up alternative trading and cultural relationships. Among those alternatives is China.

Kenyans and the Chinese appear to be very happy with each other, at least President Kibaki and Mr Hu are. The get-together of African leaders with Chinese leaders in Beijing simply solidified this mutual happiness; a rekindling of Bandung.

Prof Munene teaches at the USIU-Africa in Nairobi