By Isidoros Karderinis
China from the beginning of the 21st century until now has succeeded and climbed to the second place in the world economy after the USA. Thus, it now claims global diplomatic and economic influence, competing with the other major powers in trade and investments, especially in Africa.
Africa, on the other hand, is a vast geographical area of the planet; it’s the world’s third-largest continent in terms of area and second in population (estimated approximately for 2024 at 1.5 billion inhabitants). It has an area of about 30.2 million square kilometers together with the surrounding islands and occupies 6% of the total surface of the Earth and 20.4 percent of the total land area.
It is also rich in natural resources (oil, natural gas, uranium, lithium, cobalt, diamonds, gold, copper, etc.) and is therefore of great economic interest. The Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, accounts for about 70% of the world’s cobalt production.
China’s relations with African states are, of course, not new. They date from the 1950s, and specifically in 1955, when the Bandung Conference took place, in which the 29 participating African and Asian countries adopted the “Five Principles for Peaceful Coexistence,” which China had initially agreed with India in 1954. These are: mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity; mutual non-aggression; mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful coexistence.
At that time, China signed state trade agreements with African states, such as Algeria or Sudan. Also at the end of 1963, the then Premier of China, Chu Enlai, number two after Mao Zedong, made a trip to ten African states in two months. Since then, China’s presence in Africa has been increasingly intense.
China’s interests in the African continent are centered on economy, politics, security, and culture. Africa is important to China primarily as a huge source of resources to sustain its growing manufacturing base, as well as a source of energy security. At the same time, China sees Africa as an important destination for its low-cost manufactured goods.
Africa also plays an important role in international multilateral organizations, especially in organizations where each member country has one vote. Thus, China is trying to woo African governments in order to garner support for its policies on the international stage.
Since 2002, in fact, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) has been fully operational, whose members are 53 African countries (i.e. all fully recognized except the Kingdom of Eswatini, which has diplomatic relations with Taiwan), and which operates at three levels, with the ministerial level higher. It is also held every three years, alternating between an African country and China. The most recent FOCAC Conference was held in Beijing from 4-6 September 2024.
At this 9th Conference, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to provide Africa with 360 billion yuan ($50.7 billion) in financial support over the next three years, while promising that his government would help create at least 1 million jobs on the continent.
Established in 2000, FOCAC is the main multilateral coordination mechanism between African countries and China anchored on the principles of peaceful coexistence. It is the main channel through which China provides resources to African countries. Through FOCAC, China provides aid in the form of debt cancellation—in 2003 it deleted US$750 million to a total of 31 African countries—grant aid, soft loans, and interest-free loans.
Beijing, therefore, is the first creditor and one of the main financiers of many infrastructure projects in Africa. Chinese funding has gone into building highways and railways. The Addis Ababa-Djibouti and Mombasa-Nairobi railway networks in Kenya, including ports and electricity production power stations across the continent (e.g., in Nigeria, Ghana, and Gabon), are classic examples.
More than 3,000 Chinese companies, after all, are present in African cities, of which over 70% are private companies, forming the mainstay of Chinese investment in Africa.
From 2017 to 2022, China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa reached 74 billion yuan ($10.14 billion), accounting for 18% of global foreign direct investment flow in Africa and on par with Europe and the USA.
Beijing is the leading trading partner of the African continent. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), almost a quarter of African exports go to China, mainly minerals and metals, and about 16% of imports come from there. China’s trade with African countries peaked in 2023 at $282 billion.
At the same time, as reported by the Global Times, tourists from China visited various African destinations in 2024, including Kenya, Tanzania and Morocco. In fact, according to this publication [Global Times], Kenya announced $1.1 billion in revenue from similar tourism activities in the first half of 2024 alone.
China is, moreover, in fierce and open competition with the West, primarily the United States, as the two superpowers are trying to increase their political influence on the continent and their access to its natural resources.
China’s penetration campaign in Africa takes on added weight for the Chinese regime as it claims leadership in the so-called “Global South,” which has gained such momentum that it implicitly indicates the rearrangement of global power between an old and a rising world.
In closing, I would like to emphasize that the declared principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states must not be circumvented by China under any circumstances. The future of Africa, which has been brutally tortured by European colonialism—mostly exploited in terms of its natural resources and its population—must be determined by Africans, not dictated by any foreign powers that may seek to exploit their resources and their problematic points for their own benefit.
Isidoros Karderinis was born in Athens in 1967. He is a journalist, foreign press correspondent accredited to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as an economist, novelist and poet. His articles have been published in newspapers, magazines and websites in many countries around the world.