Forget electric vehicles and ignore solar panels; if there’s one area where China has been consistently ahead of the game, it’s in diplomacy with Africa. For years, the United States and its partners have been playing catch-up with China’s sprawling Belt and Road Initiative, which has poured an estimated $1 trillion into infrastructure projects. So as China shifts up the gears into a new phase of engagement with the continent, it’s worth paying attention.
China’s new approach will be on full display this week as dozens of African leaders arrive in Beijing for the triannual Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). These glitzy summits – often seen as the ultimate symbol of China’s growing influence on the continent – have been held every three years since 2000, with leaders historically returning home with billions in new deals.
The last summit, in 2021, was a notable exception to this rule. Held mid-pandemic, President Xi Jinping participated via a distinctly less glamorous video link, and the number of projects in each of FOCAC’s nine cooperation areas shrank from 50 to just ten. Even more notably, total spending commitments – which reached a remarkable $60 billion in both 2015 and 2018 – dropped to $40 billion. Headlines at the time questioned whether we were seeing the beginning of the end of China’s interest in the region.
As Chinese spending begins to tick back up, it seems clear that 2021 was simply overshadowed by Covid concerns. But as China prepares to breathe new life into the relationship this week, this summit will in its own way be a break from the past.
Yes, Africa remains central to China’s global priorities, but those priorities have shifted since the last time leaders met in person in 2018. For Beijing, this week’s summit will be a chance to launch a refreshed approach to its presence on the continent.
This does not mean a return to the 2015–2018 spending peak of China-Africa relations, during which Chinese policy banks offered huge loans for hard infrastructure projects, with no – or limited – “strings attached”.
That’s not a model that really works for China anymore – or indeed, for many African countries. China’s trickier domestic economic picture means greater public scrutiny of financial outflows, and Chinese institutions are more concerned about both financial and reputational risk. Accusations of “debt-trap diplomacy” have not helped the country’s global image.
Appetite is also shifting among African countries, many of which are facing growing debt burdens and are cautious of potential labour issues or environmental damage from large infrastructure projects.
That will all be reflected in how Chinese leadership talks about its approach at FOCAC. Infrastructure is not off the table completely, but Beijing’s new slogan is that “small is beautiful” and projects should be “lean, clean and green”, meaning a more cautious and reputation-conscious approach to lending.
That doesn’t mean that Chinese spending is drying up altogether, just that it’s changing. In fact, after the pandemic-induced slump, total financial flows from China to Africa are again increasing year-on-year. Data from the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) China Global Investment Tracker show that lending and investment from China to Africa have risen from just under $14 billion in 2021 to more than $22 billion in 2023. According to AidData, since 2021, just under 60 per cent of Chinese contracts also include strict environmental, social and governance conditions.
This increase is in large part down to the increased role of private investors, with growth now being driven by surges in investment rather than traditional loans. Chinese investment more than quintupled from around $2 billion in 2020 to more than $11.5 billion in 2023, and in 2023 – for the first time ever – the value of investment overtook the value of loans. In Africa, the focus has been on key metals and minerals like cobalt, lithium and copper, driven by private giants such as CMOC Group and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited.
These investments reflect China’s changing priorities: hard infrastructure is taking a back seat to less risky projects that capitalise on China’s skill in digital solutions and green tech, or to ensuring supplies of the materials that underpin key supply chains.
And it’s not only about economic harmony: Beijing also sees African countries as a potentially receptive audience for key diplomatic priorities.
Since the last fully in-person FOCAC six years ago, China’s foreign policy has undergone some major shifts. The pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and landmark US trade and industrial policies – such as the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act – have convinced Beijing that it needs to take a more active role in global affairs to protect its domestic economy and political infrastructure from external shocks.
As a result, China’s core principles are shifting too. Beijing has been moving away from former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s mantra of “hiding strength and biding time” while “maintaining a low profile”. Now, President Xi is calling for China to “be proactive and achieve things” and “dare to struggle”.
In an African context, that’s likely to mean a much broader suite of cooperation initiatives as Beijing looks to build Global South consensus on its vision of global governance. Expect FOCAC to showcase three ambitious new initiatives – the Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative and Global Civilisation Initiative – that seek to carve out a bigger Chinese role in everything from conflict resolution to multilateral reform.
Many African countries are already in broad alignment with some of these ideas – especially greater multilateral representation for the African Union (AU) – and there’s incentive for Beijing to make sure new initiatives appeal to African audiences: Africa’s 53 UN votes can make or break key Chinese proposals.
That means it’s not just shifts in spending flows we should be paying attention to. China is evolving its approach not just in line with its own changing priorities, but African leaders’ too. In the same way Chinese infrastructure lending has skilfully plugged gaps left by traditional partners, these new initiatives aim to do something similar: delivering security training to counter non-state threats where Western partners might not be willing, opening new channels for African exports that align with AU market-expansion priorities, and providing vocational and educational exchange programmes at a scale that almost any other country would struggle to match.
As China explores new avenues of cooperation with Africa, Western countries should be careful not to fall back into old habits. In the past, criticism of China’s engagement with the continent has implicitly criticised African leaders’ decision-making, which ends up harming relations and pushing countries closer to China. The smarter move is to wait and see precisely what China offers as it ramps up its engagement with Africa again. Pinpointing specific risks – and offering meaningful solutions – is far more effective than calling for an out-and-out rejection of Chinese engagement. Western policymakers also shouldn’t shy away from admitting that there are cases where China can simply deliver at a scale and speed no other partner can.
So as leaders return to Beijing’s grand halls this week, China will be seizing the chance to re-centre the relationship and approach African leaders as partners. And in that sense, there’s a thing or two Western countries could learn from the Chinese playbook.