The West's criticism of China's operations in Africa is unjustified and a deliberate attempt to tarnish the image of the Chinese in the eyes of Africans, a senior Zanu-PF official has said.

Zanu-PF Director for Administration Dickson Dzora, in a recent interview with Xinhua, pointed out that the western media had embarked on a sustained onslaught of the Chinese because the West viewed China as a big threat to its entrenched economic interests in Africa.

Dzora, who is also the secretary-general of the Zimbabwe-China Friendship Association, said China's growing presence in Africa had become a thorn in the flesh of the West, forcing it to resort to the dirty tactic of soiling the image of China and raise anti- Chinese sentiment among Africans.

The West, he said, did not want China to have direct economic cooperation with Africa and preferred a situation where it continued to exploit Africa's natural resources but left Africa impoverished.

"I think it's a question of when they (West) compare themselves to what they were doing in the yesteryear and what is happening now with China with its win-win policy. They feel they will lose out and they know that the region is the gulf of strategic minerals and they would want to have those minerals for themselves and then sell to China," Dzora told Xinhua.

He said the accusations by the West of China are ill-thought as China is engaging Africa on a win-win basis under the auspices of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.

"The reason why they don't want the Chinese to interface with Africa is because they know that China will bring a lot of infrastructure development to Africa," he said, adding "they don' t want that."

Dzora, who was speaking following a recent BBC documentary allegedly rubbishing China's operations in Africa, slammed the West for plundering Africa's resources during and after the colonial era without paying much attention to the development of the continent.

He said the West came into Africa in the late 19th century under the guise of brining civilization yet it was only interested in the continent's natural wealth.

He said China is doing much to assist Africa in developing its infrastructure and improving food self- sustenance, citing the New Luanda being built by the Asian country and the transport infrastructure in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) as examples.

The Belgians were in the DR Congo for about 100 years exploiting that country's rich minerals resources yet it only managed to develop a single tarred road in the vast Africa country, Dzora said.

The oil- rich Nigeria, despite the long existence of the West in that country, was still importing fuel from Europe while most African countries continued to grapple with problems of underdevelopment brought upon by the West's warped trade relations with Africa.

Dzora said it is shaming for the West to attack China when it is contributing a lot to the global economy through its advanced technological expertise.