China’s Scramble for Africa
Africa has been a target of many Western nations’ appetite for global power, wealth, and territorial expansion for much of modern history. At the end of World War II, however, the Western world partially released its grasp on Africa, paving the road for independence and reunion with its pre-imperial culture and institutions. This doctrine has endured ever since; the United States, though at times eager to involve itself with global affairs, has remained committed to avoiding the negative tones of African colonization and denouncing the failures of previous foreign interventions, instead opting to send distanced aid when deemed appropriate and welcome.
But Africa has recently shouldered a surge of investment energy from a new superpower: China. The “Belt and Road Initiative,” launched by Xi Jinping in 2013, aims to flex China’s industrial might over underdeveloped portions of Asia and Africa, ideally invigorating local economies, stimulating business and infrastructure projects, and, of course, expanding tangible Chinese influence (Campbell, Raushenbush, and Chatzky 2023). Though originally intended for East Africa, China has swept this initiative across the continent, turning it from a point of tangential experimentation into a centerpiece of their foreign engagement. From 2003 to 2020, China has increased direct investment in Africa by a factor of 56—to a record $4.2 billion—while the stock of companies operating in Africa peaked in valuation at $46.1 billion. Loans, the most politically exigent, have been estimated at $153 billion from 2000 to 2019, a significant number for a continent whose countries have an average GDP of only $55 billion (Fu, Putz, and Gammon 2021).
To African nations, China is seen as more willing to take risks, create new industries, and invest with fewer strings attached than the West. Moreover, African countries are eager for legitimacy on the international stage, economic strength, and political stability, and are more than willing to lend political support to China when needed—all of Africa, save Eswatini, now publicly endorses the “One China” policy, for example (Vines and Wallace 2023). And to China, nations in Africa offer the resources, labor, and vulnerable economic and political conditions ripe for extending their economic and geopolitical influence (Hanauer and Morris 2014).
Despite this, Sino-African relations are far from a model symbiotic relationship. China’s main African industries are construction and mining, which indeed create many jobs for local Africans, but jobs which are by nature low-skilled and offer few to no opportunities for promotion (Vines and Wallace 2023). Managerial roles, which provide the most upward mobility and prospects for industry self-governance, are almost never given to Africans. As is natural, this social and cultural distance between employees and managers results in frequent labor conflicts, stagnated benefits for African communities, and in some places, outright neglect of the localities in which the corporations are operating. In Tanzania, for example, the China-Africa Research Initiative found that “most plastic recycling facilities…hadn’t installed any waste management systems at all, nor did they provide any protective health or safety equipment for their workers” (Link 2021).
In welcoming Chinese investment—often because it is their only option—African nations are finding themselves trapped in a web of debt with serious political, moral, and cultural implications. Issues of debt have put the vital Kenyan port linking Nairobi and Mombasa in the hands of the Chinese government, created domestic political crises in Zambia over whether or not to recognize Taiwan, and chained Angola and Egypt to an insurmountable amount of public debt, a burden which helps to keep their economies dependent on loans from the International Monetary Fund (Link 2021, CNN Staff 2022).
An Africa economically and politically subservient to China is not a trivial matter for the world. Africa’s population will double in size by 2050, making it the world’s fastest growing continent in a time where population decline is the preeminent problem in many regions (McKenna 2017). Quite soon, Africa will be home to one of the most economically ripe groups of people in the world: a bulge of young, active people who, if given the opportunity, could take Africa to new levels of growth, productivity, and development. If things continue as is—with China continuing its outreach and the US staying absent—then the balance of world power could dramatically swing towards the Chinese government. Beyond that, Africa’s economy would start to ‘fill out’ its productive capacity within a cage of Chinese business practices—a culture which the Global Business Ethics Survey reports to prioritize production and productivity, at the expense of observing high health and quality standards, ensuring worker protection against misconduct, and fostering an ethical workplace environment (Ethics and Compliance Initiative 2022). Businesses and nations will also find themselves treading significant ethical problems in their ties with the Chinese government, a body which perpetuates high levels of surveillance on its citizens and violates the human rights of religious and ethnic minorities.
This all considered, the United States needs to adopt a more liberal investment strategy in Africa. Since 2021, the US Government has invested around $18 billion, and the US private sector has invested around $8.6 billion into trade and investment deals in Africa (The White House 2022). The Biden administration is funneling this money through initiatives including the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), a developing nations infrastructure fund aimed, in part, at competing with the Belt and Road Initiative in Africa.
On the most optimistic side, G7 countries—the US, UK, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Japan—aim to invest $600 billion in developing countries’ infrastructure development, a small step behind China’s $1 trillion “Belt and Road Initiative” (Wei 2022). However, when applied to Africa, there are a number of problems. The White House describes the PGII as a “values-driven, high-impact, and transparent infrastructure partnership to meet the enormous infrastructure needs of low- and middle-income countries and support the United States’ and its allies’ economic and national security interests” (The White House 2022). A virtuous-sounding statement indeed. It contains traces, though, of the age-old Western taboo: when it comes to the African people, the West fancies itself as some enlightened “savior,” swooping in to solve their problems, encourage democracy, and inculcate them into the Western fold. China doesn’t: they invest.
Tragically, this ‘no strings attached’ approach is far more successful at aligning Africa’s political and economic systems with China, and though our “values-driven” vaunt makes us feel good, it does little to meet Africa’s needs. If the US builds industry in Africa like China does, African nations will more easily gravitate towards democracy—or at least have the option to—by virtue of their economies being more closely tied with those of the US. But keeping with our current investment strategy almost invariably raises costs for African nations and puts China at an advantage. On top of that, infrastructure investment may not be the best place to invest. There is convincing evidence that due to the cost of African labor investment would be best targeted at the agricultural sector, focusing on improving productivity and helping small farmers cultivate Africa’s rich natural resources (Ndii 2022, 4).
In the interest of balancing the power disparity in Africa, and providing African countries with more options as to the political ideologies they associate with, the US should, when African nations welcome it, provide the funds, loans, stock, human capital, agriculture, and infrastructure that they are able to. Not only do more Africans look to the US for future development over China, many are actively disappointed with their limited options; during a visit to the White House in 2017, nine African leaders told then-President Trump that “we would prefer to do business with the United States and other western countries, but you aren’t there … unlike China” (Sanny and Selormey 2021, 2; Casin 2018).
Africa has the potential to be the most important continent of this century. China’s investment is attractive and well-timed, but dangerous for the tranquility of the region, the global power balance, and fostering responsible government and business. The US should, aggressively and without strings, invest in African agriculture and industry, help them grow into the thriving economy their resources are ready for, and foster closer ties with its people, nations, and systems of government. For us, for them, and for the world, the US needs to be there for Africa.
References
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Caslin, Olivier. 2018. “Afrique-États-Unis : rencontre avec Cyril Sartor, le « Monsieur Afrique » de Trump – Jeune Afrique.” Jeune Afrique. https://www.jeuneafrique.com/mag/564959/politique/afrique-etats-unis-rencontre-avec-cyril-sartor-le-monsieur-afrique-de-trump/.
CNN Staff. 2022. “How the Arab world's most populous country became addicted to debt.” CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/16/business/egypt-debt-crisis-mime-intl/index.html.
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Fu, Yike, Catherine Putz, and Thi Gammon. 2021. “The Quiet China-Africa Revolution: Chinese Investment.” The Diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2021/11/the-quiet-china-africa-revolution-chinese-investment/.
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McKenna, John. 2017. “6 numbers that prove the future is African | World Economic Forum.” The World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/05/africa-is-rising-and-here-are-the-numbers-to-prove-it/.
Ndii, David. 2022. Africa’s Infrastructure-Led Growth Experiment Is Faltering. It Is Time to Focus on Agriculture. N.p.: Carnegie Endowment. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://carnegieendowment.org/files/202212-Ndii_-_Africa_Agriculture.pdf.
Sanny, Josephine A., and Edem Selormey. 2021. Africans welcome China’s influence but maintain democratic aspirations. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/migrated/files/publications/Dispatches/ad489-pap3-africans_welcome_chinas_influence_maintain_democratic_aspirations-afrobarometer_dispatch-15nov21.pdf.
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