It was a pleasant surprise to hear the announcements in Chinese on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Washington to Addis Ababa. It shows the welcome arms Ethiopia is extending to Chinese.

In fact, the cab driver taking me to Washington's Dulles Airport in the morning was excited to learn that I was going to Ethiopia. She said I should also go to her hometown Uganda, only a short distance from Ethiopia, where Chinese are also welcomed.

While poverty and diseases still haunt many African nations, the continent's economy is taking off in a big way, and China has been part of that in the past decade.