China’s scramble for Africa

The West is about to get its comeuppance – if it does not wake up. The balance of the world economy is shifting decisively to what was once seen as the Third World, a shift led by China and, to a lesser extent, India. It is a dynamic that China hopes to exploit in order to replace America as the new global rule-maker. One region in particular is at the centre of China’s economic and geopolitical plans: Africa.

The rise of Africa, which now has 11 of the world’s 20 fastest-growing economies, is only just beginning. And China’s strategy is clearly focussed on harvesting Africa’s growing wealth, while sidelining the US and the diminished former European powers. In 2023, the EU’s then foreign-affairs and security-policy chief, Josep Borrell, warned that, ‘Little by little, we are losing Africa’.

Africa’s importance begins with its unparalleled resource endowments, particularly in critical minerals. These are used to power everything from fighter jets to smartphones. The Democratic Republic of Congo alone controls over 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt reserves – a critical mineral used in electric-vehicle batteries and jet engines. South Africa boasts over 80 per cent of global platinum and 70 per cent of the world’s chromium, minerals without which we couldn’t make jewellery, car exhausts or most industrial applications.

These strategic materials provide the foundation for modern technological civilisation, and China has systematically secured preferential access through long-term partnerships that exclude American and other Western competitors. Beyond critical minerals, the continent also has substantial deposits of oil, natural gas, diamonds and gold. Nigeria and Angola are among the top 20 oil-producing nations, while Mozambique’s liquefied-natural-gas reserves promise to reshape global energy markets. China has invested heavily in all three countries. In recent years, it has also upped its investment in oil-rich Libya, a major producer once aligned with Europe.

African agriculture is also strategically important. With 60 per cent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, Africa represents the world’s last major frontier for agricultural expansion. Perennially facing ‘food-security concerns’, China has recognised this potential, and is investing heavily in African agricultural infrastructure and securing long-term food-supply agreements. This will reduce China’s dependence on American agricultural exports while positioning itself as Africa’s primary food-security partner.

Most importantly, Africa is producing the one critical asset that the world economy needs most: people. While China’s population is projected to decline, falling to 1940s levels by 2100, Africa’s population is heading in the opposite direction. It is projected to double to 2.5 billion by 2050, with the median age remaining below 25 throughout this period. Critically, Africa is predicted to be home to 25 per cent of all working-age adults by 2050.

Given Africa’s vast resources, agricultural potential and population growth, one would think Western capitalists and their governments might be seeking to invest in Africa. But instead, the African economy has acquired a distinctly Chinese cast, with little competition from the West. Beijing’s approach to Africa represents the most comprehensive foreign-engagement strategy on the continent since European colonialism.

African nations’ willingness to accept Chinese involvement isn’t hard to understand. It partially reflects admiration for the Chinese government’s successful efforts at home. It has reduced extreme poverty and overseen a huge growth in wages, up almost fivefold since 2006. At a time when the Western middle class has been shrinking, China’s has enjoyed an enormous increase, at least until recently, especially during the period from 1980 to 2000. Add to that, China’s ability to build infrastructure is far more impressive than the generally sluggish pace of construction in the West, particularly the US. And now Chinese innovation, at least in biotechnology and AI, threatens to challenge or even surpass that of the West.

The Trump administration’s tariff policies have also helped China, with nations in the developing world and even Europe turning towards Beijing as a more reliable trade partner. Indeed, with Trump’s attention focussed on Great Power competition in the Pacific and crises in Eastern Europe, China is seizing its opportunity in Africa to reshape global power dynamics. With the aid of its prime ally, Russia, it is now replacing the old colonial powers as the lead enforcer on the continent.

Chinese presence is palpable throughout Africa. Its firms are active stakeholders in over a third of Africa’s 231 commercial ports. China-Africa trade has grown from roughly $200 billion in 2013 to $295 billion in 2024. In contrast, American trade with Africa has fallen off a cliff. African imports to the US fell from $93 billion in 2011 to just $37 billion in 2021, with the value of American exports to Africa also in decline.

America’s retreat from Africa is reflected in more than economic statistics. Take consulates, which are critical to establishing ties with foreign countries. The US has reduced its African diplomatic missions by 24 per cent. Meanwhile, non-Western powers are aggressively expanding their diplomatic presence. Following a 62 per cent increase during that period, China now leads with 65 missions, surpassing America’s 56.

This shift reflects these countries’ changing influences across Africa. China has clearly won the diplomatic battle for African support at the United Nations. African countries consistently vote with China across all major issue categories. With China-backing Africa representing 28 per cent of UN General Assembly votes, Beijing now has an effective veto power over many international initiatives, blocking American policy goals.

A recent study by Chapman University reveals another aspect of China’s role in Africa – the growth of its media influence. Chinese state-owned media now operate 37 news bureaux across the continent, employing 500 journalists in Kenya alone. Thousands of African journalists are trained in China in order to tell ‘China’s story well’. Western media, on the other hand, has never been so weak in African countries. The BBC has closed multiple African-language services. Voice of America, the US’s state-funded international broadcaster, has been all but shut down.

China is also unburdened by what is arguably the greatest millstone around the neck of the West: the green agenda. Although Trump is now striking a different tone, Western governments, NGOs and international bodies have long pushed for draconian energy policies that are accelerating deindustrialisation in the West. China by contrast, remains by far the world’s largest producer of carbon dioxide.

China’s pragmatic approach to energy allows it to push for the development of growth-inducing infrastructure in Africa, including roads, airports, highways and power plants. According to US government data from 2024, China provided $206 billion to Africa through so-called Belt and Road funding between 2013 and 2021. The US, meanwhile, provided just $23 billion in infrastructure assistance to Africa during the same period.

Africans generally have little interest in the West’s green agenda. They see the use of fossil fuels as the best hope of bringing electricity to the roughly 600million in sub-Saharan Africa who do not yet have it. Little wonder African governments are prepared to ignore the scolding of the likes of Greta Thunberg. Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari has warned that the climate policies favoured by Western governments and aid agencies could precipitate an Africa-wide energy crisis. And Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni launched a scathing attack on European climate policies during COP27 in November 2022. He called Europe ‘morally bankrupt’ for using fossil fuels while denying Africa the same right.

Yet China’s dominance of Africa is far from complete. After all, there remain intense human ties between Africa and its diaspora. A handful of facts bear this reality out. The size of the African diaspora (taking into account the trans-Atlantic slave trade) is around 350million. The vast majority live in the Americas, especially the US, Brazil Colombia and Haiti. There are also significant communities in Europe, particularly France and the UK. China is home to a tiny fraction of the African diaspora.

Beyond migration, there is another reason why African nations might still look towards America and Europe rather than China. That is, for many Africans the West remains a model of democratic governance and market economies far superior to Chinese authoritarianism.

China’s investment drive has also not been without its problems. African countries, particularly the poorest ones, have realised that China’s promises of riches through instruments such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) were not as generous as they first seemed. Last year, the World Bank warned that multiple African countries were on the brink of economic collapse because of debts they owed to Chinese creditors. In 54 out of the 120 developing countries for which the World Bank has relevant data, debt-service payments to China now exceed the combined repayments owed to the Paris Club (a group of 22 OECD countries and prominent lenders that includes the US, the UK and France). Many African countries are discovering too late that China is not so much a beneficent donor as a ruthless debt collector.

African workers appear to have been similarly sold short by the promise of Chinese investment. Instead of training and employing local workforces, China has sent a million migrants to what author Howard French has called its ‘second continent’. China’s motivation for this is simple: it gets people out of its crowded cities, keeps them in work and ensures a pliant workforce. Yet this hardly reflects the nation-building promise many Africans believed to be at the heart of the BRI or the AIIB’s projects.

This has soured the relationship between Africa and China. What could end it, however, is the impression that the once-indestructible China is fighting political and economic demons of its own – some much bigger than Africa’s. China is now the world’s fastest-ageing society, its bloated real-estate markets are on the cusp of imploding and industrial production has slowed. Investment from the US, the EU, the UK and Japan, key to China’s recent growth, has dwindled. Even China’s military, impressive as its growth has been, is plagued by incompetence, corruption and a lack of battlefield experience.

There has never been a better time for the West to invest in and form deeper ties with African nations. It isn’t just the last great economic frontier. It is also a continent brimming with human potential. We should all have a keen interest in helping as many Africans live in open, democratic societies, with the economic opportunities capitalism can offer, rather than as subjects of Chinese state-owned companies.

None of this is possible without a sustained commitment on the part of the West to engage with Africa. The time for half-measures and bureaucratic inertia has passed. Western nations must commit to a comprehensive engagement with Africa that matches the scale of the challenge and the magnitude of the opportunity.

Joel Kotkin is a spiked columnist, a presidential fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University in Orange, California, and a senior research fellow at the University of Texas’ Civitas Institute.

Bheki Mahlobo is an economist at Cronje Private Clients. He specialises in economic and financial markets research as well as political trend analysis.