From Non-Interference to Adaptative Pragmatism: China’s Security Policy in Africa

Article by Mamoudou Gazibo and Abdou Rahim Lema in African Studies Quarterly

ABSTRACT

China’s growing focus on African peace and security has generated discussions on its longstanding foreign policy principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of African countries and most of that growing body of research have argued that China is doing away with its foreign policy principle. Drawing its conclusions from a careful analysis of China’s security engagement with African countries, this paper argues that, forced to deal with various African crises, China has been pragmatically adaptive. This adaptive pragmatism has allowed Beijing to get involved in Africa’s peace and security landscape without overtly compromising its traditional posture on non-interference. 

At 20, the AU Has a Lot to Be Proud Of—and a Lot of Work to Do

By  Chris Olaoluwa Ogunmodede for World Politics Review (WPR) 

Last week, 13 African heads of state and government attended the African Union’s Mid-Year Coordination Meeting, the principal forum for the AU and Africa’s Regional Economic Communities, or RECs, to align their priorities and coordinate implementation of the continental integration agenda. This year’s meeting, the fourth since the format was launched in 2017 to replace a mid-year leaders’ summit, was focused on issues like the status of regional integration in Africa; the division of labor between the AU, its member states and RECs; a tripartite free trade agreement between the East African Community, The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the Southern African Development Community; an interregional knowledge-exchange platform on early warning and conflict prevention; Africa’s response to the coronavirus pandemic; and the impact of the Ukraine crisis on the continent.

The gathering took place in Lusaka, Zambia, which had not hosted a continental meeting since 2001. It also came a little over a week after the AU commemorated the 20th anniversary of its founding on July 9. Debates about the AU’s role in Africa’s affairs and its effectiveness at grappling with the issues facing the continent have raged over the past decade, and they have intensified in recent years amid multiple challenges to peace, security and governance across Africa.

How China’s Ambitious Belt and Road Plans for East Africa Came Apart

China’s infrastructure projects abroad often suffer from misinterpretations of the local political climate. 

By  David Skidmore for The Diplomat

As China draws back from large scale infrastructure investments in Africa, it is worth considering why so many major Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects in the region, unveiled with great fanfare, have ultimately struggled. A connecting thread across such cases has been China’s inability to manage the political complexities associated with infrastructure development.

Within China itself, the context for infrastructure development is defined by political continuity, deep-pocketed state actors, state-controlled media, and a weak civil society. Authorities can plan and implement projects with few serious impediments.

The BRI was envisioned as an extension of this top-down “China Model” of infrastructure development to other countries. But, of course, the political circumstances familiar to Chinese actors at home are seldom duplicated abroad – despite the fact that, according to Ding Yifan of China’s Development Research Centre of the State Council, Chinese companies often “think other countries are just like China.”

Chinese actors typically approach BRI deals with two contradictory assumptions: First, the political leadership with whom they are dealing is either too weak or too venal to challenge contract terms that decidedly favor China; and, second, these same leaders will be strong enough to fend off resistance to ambitious infrastructure projects by opposition politicians and civil society groups while also mobilizing the financial resources necessary to sustain expensive, long term projects.

In practice, few projects meet the “just right” conditions of this Goldilocks formula. Instead, conditions are “too hot” – strong leaders reject unfavorable terms – or “too cold” – weak leaders cannot defend bad deals against domestic opposition or rescue the projects once they run into trouble. 

The three case studies below each illuminate a different path to failure.

A Strong Leader Nixes a Deal: Bagamoyo Port

In March 2013, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed an agreement for a $10 billion port designed to handle 20 million containers a year. China Merchants Holding was contracted to build the port with China’s Export-Import Bank providing the bulk of financing. The port would be connected to a large industrial city and the TAZARA Railway, allowing goods to move to and from central Africa.

Situated in Kiwete’s home district of Bagamoyo, the port was well-positioned to shower benefits upon the president’s supporters. With his term in office ending less than a month later, Kiwete rushed to conclude port construction contracts in October 2015.

In a stunning move, incoming President John Magufuli quickly moved to cancel the contracts. In contrast with Kikweta, Magufuli was an economic nationalist inclined to hard bargaining with foreign investors. Magufuli was also a tough, often authoritarian, leader who brooked little opposition.

After years of further negotiations, Magufuli pulled the plug in October 2019. Declaring Chinese demands “exploitative,” Magufuli complained: “Those investors are coming with tough conditions that can only be accepted by mad people.” Tanzania Ports Authority Chief Executive Deusdedit Kakoko rejected China Merchants Holding International’s five key conditions, which included a 99-year lease, a tax holiday, below market rates for water and electricity, relaxed regulation, and restrictions on Tanzania’s ability to develop competing ports.

Following Magufuli’s death in office, newly installed President Samia Suluhu Hassan announced, in June 2021, the resumption of negotiations with China over the Bagamoyo Port project. Hassan is closely aligned with former President Jakaya Kikwete’s political network within the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) Party. Should Hassan prove pliable enough to accept China’s conditions, the port project would risk failure along our other two pathways.

A Weak Leader Results in a White Elephant: Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway

Weak leaders accept terms favoring foreign lenders and investors. But one-sided projects often generate fatal opposition or, if implemented, risk becoming financial white elephants. Two Kenya cases highlight below featured contract terms heavily favoring China. Both projects were negotiated by President Uhuru Kenyatta, widely considered to be a weaker than his predecessors: Uhuru’s father Jomo Kenyatta, a towering anti-colonial figure who served as Kenya’s first post-independence leader, and the autocratic Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, who held the presidency for 22 years.

Despite his family pedigree, Uhuru Kenyatta was soundly defeated in his first bid for the presidency in 2002. He barely survived a court challenge to his 2013 victory. Although initial returns from the August 2017 election showed Kenyatta the winner, the Supreme Court ordered a new election after siding with a challenge mounted by the main opposition candidate. Following months of growing tension, Kenyatta’s challenger withdrew from the October revote, allowing Kenyatta to retain office.

To improve his precarious political position, Kenyatta sought to accelerate Kenyan economic development by attracting foreign capital, especially from China. In 2018, China held close to $10 billion or 73 percent of Kenya’s overall debt, among the highest rates in Africa. Even as Kenyan debt service tripled between 2013 and 2018, Kenyatta defiantly declared: “I will continue to borrow to develop.”

Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project served as the crown jewel of Kenyatta’s ambitious plan. The railway was designed to speed the flow and increase the capacity of goods moving to and from the Kenyan port of Mombasa. Kenya contracted with the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) to construct the SGR in three main stages. The plan also envisioned a fourth stage undertaken in cooperation with the government of Uganda, with a line running to the Ugandan capital of Kampala and eventually to the interior of East Africa. The financial viability of the project depended upon the expected volume of goods that an extended rail network would realize.

The bulk of financing for the first stage, from Mombasa to Nairobi, was provided by the China Export-Import Bank in the amount of $3.24 billion. A special purpose vehicle called the Kenyan Railway Corporation (KRC) contracted with CRBC to operate the line. Passenger and freight service were both operational by early 2018.

The terms of the SGR deal heavily favored the Chinese partners. Indeed, a Kenyan appeals court later ruled the original contract invalid due to the lack of competitive and transparent bidding. As collateral, Kenya was required to set up a special reserve account and to waive sovereign immunity for the port of Mombasa, making the latter vulnerable to seizure by Chinese creditors should Kenya default.

The loan for the first stage carried a high interest rate and quick repayment period. Conversely, to finance operations the CRBC borrowed from the KRC at zero interest and a generous grace period. Repayment was made not in cash, but in services. Moreover, CRBC was relieved of liability for operating losses. Contract disputes were managed through arbitration in China under Chinese law.

Revenue from the initial year of operation came to less than half of projections and covered only half of operating costs. A Kenyan government report estimated that without subsidies, freight transport along the new rail line cost twice that via truck. Despite hopes that the rail line would boost exports, the tonnage of goods shipped inland from Mombasa exceeded that shipped to the port by a ratio of almost 8 to 1. While the second stage of the SGR project is nearing completion, China’s Export-Import Bank pulled funding from the third stage due to concerns about financial viability as well as worries that Kenya is “politically unstable.”

In 2020, the SGR lost money at a rate of over $9 million per month, prompting the Kenyan government to require that government agencies and importers ship goods via train rather than truck, a demand resisted by importers and truckers. Kenya Railways defaulted on a $350 million payment to CRBC’s subsidiary Africa Star, which operates the SGR. In July 2020, KRC announced plans to take over management of the SGR from Africa Star, which, in turn, has demanded the full payment of past due debts before the full transfer of operations to KRC.

In sum, Kenyatta’s intended legacy project has become a financial morass while Kenya and China struggle to disentangle themselves from one another.

A Weak Leader Sees a Project Vetoed by Domestic Opponents: Lamu Power Project

In 2014, Kenya’s Ministry of Energy and Petroleum awarded a contract to Amu Power for construction of a $2 billion power plant, East Africa’s first to rely upon coal. Sixty percent of the total estimated project cost was to be financed by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, a Chinese state-owned commercial bank. The plant was to be built by state-owned China Huadian Corporation.

From the beginning, the project was bathed in controversy due to the close proximity of the plant to a UNESCO heritage site, Lamu Old Town, which served as the best preserved Swahili cultural settlement in East Africa. There were also worries about the environmental impact of the plant.

Opposition to the project arose within Kenya’s Energy Regulatory Commission before licensing approval was finally given in 2016 by the National Environment Management Authority. These bureaucratic delays allowed time for a coalition of local and international NGOs to coalesce in opposition. An umbrella organization called Save Lamu brought together 40 local civil society groups. Save Lamu received support from national NGOs such as the INUKA Trust Fund and international NGOs, including South Africa-based Natural Justice. From 2016 to 2019, the coalition conducted a campaign of petitions, protests, public meetings and workshops under the “deCOALinize” banner.

Save Lamu repeatedly requested meetings with representatives of ICBC and the Chinese embassy without response. In June 2019, a deCOALinize and Greenpeace march to the Chinese embassy was interrupted by police. This succeeded, however, in securing a subsequent meeting with Chinese Ambassador to Kenya Wu Peng, along with representatives of two Chinese firms under contract to construct the plant. No ICBC representative was present.

Acknowledging that it was Kenya’s decision whether to proceed with the plant, Wu expressed reluctance to engage with civil society groups: “You know the problem is who represents your people. As a country, how do we engage bilaterally? We cannot talk to each individual person. It is impossible. You have about 50 million people but you have one administration elected by your people. That is the only way as government to government.”

Save Lamu and other groups sued to halt the project. In 2019, the Kenya National Environmental Tribunal cancelled the license for the Lamu power plant project, ruling that officials had failed to carry out adequate environmental assessments or public consultations. In November 2020, ICBC withdrew from the project, as did General Electric, which had planned an equity investment.

In retrospect, ICBC and the other Chinese entities were hampered by their discomfort and unfamiliarity in navigating the political complexities posed by operating in a country with democratic institutions, an independent judiciary, and a vibrant, transnationally-connected civil society. Director of the Green Belt and Road Initiative Center Christoph Nedopil Wang observes that foreign companies have little choice but to consult with civil society since “agreements between businesses and government are insufficient to ensure the implementation of a project.”

Environmental journalist Shi Yi writes: “State-owned enterprises rarely speak to the Chinese media or public and generally do so only for self-promotion. The same approach is often followed overseas. Any public communication may need approval from the headquarters in China, and Chinese companies often discourage their employees from interacting with local people. This means company leaders may not be aware of investment risks in time.” 

Conclusion

The evident bargaining advantages that Chinese state-owned firms enjoy in relation to many host states often produce one-sided contracts favoring China, but do not endow Chinese agents with sufficient control over the political variables necessary to project success. One-sided deals may be rejected once a strong leader assumes office, fall prey to domestic opposition, or prove financially unviable. The political Goldilocks solution sought by Chinese actors – a host country leadership too weak to drive a hard bargain but strong enough to push a project to successful conclusion against domestic opposition and financial constraints – is elusive at best. These considerations suggest limits on the possibility of projecting a “China Model” via the BRI. When it comes to Chinese infrastructure investment, perhaps Dorothy put it best: “There’s no place like home!” 

Connecting Beijing’s Global Infrastructure: The PEACE Cable in the Middle East and North Africa

By Thomas Blaubach for The Middle East Institute

Rethinking the Securitization of Public Health in Africa: A Frame of Reference

This is a new publication in Afsol Journal I co-authored with Lukmon Akintola 

Drawing from the growing literature on the securitisation of public health in general and, in particular, that of infectious diseases in Africa, this paper explores the process through which certain health issues are perceived as security and existential threats. It uses securitisation theory as its theoretical and conceptual foundation to offer a critical analysis of the securitisation of public health in the African continent and its implications before presenting a frame of reference, a better and more constructive way of strengthening health systems in the continent. 

The real reason China is pushing “digital sovereignty” in Africa

As the Chinese “tech stack” leads from undersea cables to smartphones and fintech apps, concerns grow for the digital future of ordinary Africans.

This June, Senegal’s president, Macky Sall, proudly commissioned the construction of the Diamniadio National Datacenter, about 30 kilometers outside the capital city, Dakar. Sall said the West African country would move all government data and digital platforms from foreign servers abroad to the new center, in a move to boost Senegal’s digital sovereignity. The 506- square-meter facility, which cost 46 billion CFA francs ($18.2 million), was underwritten by a Chinese loan and built by Huawei, which is providing equipment and technical support.

For some observers, declaring Sengalese digital sovereignty, enabled and funded by China, can sound like a contradiction in terms. But it’s really just one facet of a wider issue captured by the deepening tech-telecoms relationship between China and nearly every African country over the past two decades and, crucially, what it portends for the economic future of the continent.

This week, those debates were front of mind for analysts, diplomats, and tech leaders with Dakar as the backdrop for the triennial Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), the most important engagement platform between Chinese and African leaders. Dakar’s roads were lined with billboards featuring images of president Sall and Chinese president Xi Jinping, welcoming dignitaries from China and across Africa, though Xi, who has not left the country since the beginning of the pandemic, will not be there this year.

In 2018, FOCAC culminated in a total $60 billion promise by the Chinese to back numerous major infrastructure projects across Africa, with a mix of loans and grants underwritten by Chinese financial institutions, including the Export-Import Bank of China. It was all seen under the auspices of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), to build roads, bridges, and ports across the world, fully connecting China to the global economy via a modern-day Silk Road.

But it is the evolution of the “Digital Silk Road,” a term coined by Xi in a 2015 state white paper, that has quietly become a contentious topic for China-Africa watchers. The Digital Silk Road (DSR) includes everything from cross-border e-commerce, smart cities, and fintech apps through to big data, internet of things, smartphones, and undersea cables. These projects don’t grab headlines like shiny new Chinese-built airports and railways or spark panicked fears of China’s “debt trap diplomacy.” But the unfettered influence of Chinese firms developing every step of the digital ecosystem in nearly all African countries has become a growing point of concern, particularly for China’s rivals in the United States.

As Motolani Agbebi, a researcher at Tampere University in Finland, told Rest of World, significant Chinese involvement in Africa’s telecoms sector actually predates DSR. Between 1999 and 2001, Huawei and ZTE first started working consistently on the continent, supported by China’s “go out policy,” which promoted the internationalization of Chinese companies. 

But the ongoing pandemic, which has forced African governments and their citizens online to participate in remote work, schooling, and delivery of government services, has underscored Africa’s dependence on Chinese tech. “There’s no doubt that technology infrastructure and the broader Digital Silk Road initiative are far more important to China today in regions like Africa than they were even just a few years ago,” said Eric Olander, managing editor of The China Africa Project.

Meanwhile, big physical infrastructure projects, such as railways and airports, enabled by huge government debt, are coming under increased scrutiny both at home and abroad.

“Many of China’s partners in Africa are encountering financial difficulties to borrow more for the types of large transport and energy projects we saw in BRI’s first phase,” Jonathan Hillman, author of The Digital Silk Road: China’s Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future, told Rest of World. “The digital projects are a little bit more affordable.”

Agbebi added that digital projects can often seem more politically neutral. “These digital projects can often pay for themselves, unlike roads and bridges, where there’s often a debate over how much they cost,” he said.

Analysts say playing an essential role in Africa’s digital transformation gives China a stronger footing in global affairs and creates new economic opportunities for Chinese firms. “For China, there is a bigger political agenda at play, where they’re keen to use further expansion in Africa as part of their drive to set next-generation technology standards,” said Olander.

In a white paper published by the Chinese state council two days before FOCAC, titled China and Africa in the New Era: A Partnership of Equals, the Chinese government as usual emphasized its “friendship” and “win-win” cooperation with Africa. But it also laid out its tech track record in Africa with an unusual clarity, according to Hannah Wanjie Ryder, a long-time China-Africa watcher and the CEO of Development Reimagined.

Among data points, the paper notes include building “more than half of the continent’s wireless sites and high-speed mobile broadband networks; laying “more than 200,000 km of optical fiber;” and “giving broadband Internet access to 6 million households.” It also noted that 29 African countries have picked smart government service solutions from Chinese companies.

Despite the long list, many of these projects haven’t been coordinated by the Chinese government under a grand DSR vision, but that doesn’t mean it is not able to do so after the fact, said Ovigwe Eguegu, a policy analyst at Development Reimagined. Many projects were led by Chinese companies and entrepreneurs, and the government got involved later, with loan support from the Export-Import  Bank, for example. “Private Chinese companies, like Transsion and OPay, have shown what can be achieved in Africa,” said Eguegu. Shenzhen-based Transsion sold nearly half of all smartphones in Africa last year, while three-year-old Nigeria-based fintech startup OPay, owned by Chinese billionaire Zhou Yahui, has racked up millions of users and is already valued at more than $2 billion.

The continent is still woefully underserved when it comes to the digital transformation of local economies — that means there are still huge opportunities for well-funded businesses. Africa has less than 1% of total available global data center capacity, according to Xalam Analytics, and about 17% of the world’s population. 

There’s been a lot more talk about the “digital sovereignty,” that Senegalese president Sall suggested back in June. And the Chinese have been keen to support these plans, said Hillman. But digital sovereignty can also be an empty buzzword. “This feeds into the myth that storing data locally makes it more secure, even if the whole technical and support package is provided by foreign firms.” The U.S. has supported similar plans, with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation investing $300 million in South Africa–based Liquid Telecom’s Africa Data Centres last December. 

In the coming years, Chinese investment will focus on tech in African countries and other emerging markets, according to Olander. “The world is becoming a lot smaller for companies like Huawei that are being pushed out of Global North countries,” he said. “So regions like Africa, even though nowhere near as lucrative, have become much more important.”

It’ll be up to African policymakers and governments to ensure they don’t completely give Chinese companies full control of their digital ecosystems. While this caution should apply to any foreign partner, the depth of Chinese tech firms’ relationships on the continent could put China in an unusually powerful position to push their government’s geopolitical influence. 

African governments should learn from China’s own experience, said Development Reimagined’s Ryder. Instead of simply allowing Chinese partners to bring in technical experts who leave after building digital platforms, these governments should ensure there is significant knowledge transfer, retention of corporate control, and sharing of IP. “We should be requiring joint ventures with Chinese tech companies, as China did with the likes of IBM and others in the 1980s,” said Ryder. 

The Case for Chinese Foreign Aid

By NANCY QIAN for Project Syndicate  

Critics have long accused China of using foreign aid to advance its geopolitical goals, rather than to help the world’s poor. But recent studies suggest that Chinese development assistance is a rare example of aid that systematically and meaningfully benefits recipient countries.

Since 2000, China has spent $843 billion on bilateral aid. That is around $39.5 billion per year, similar to the amount provided by the United States, the world’s largest donor of foreign aid. Although the two countries’ definitions of foreign aid differ, no one disputes the fact that China – which in the past two decades has financed 13,427 bilateral aid projects in 165 countries – is the biggest new player in this domain. Moreover, recent research is challenging outside observers’ often negative view of the country’s overseas development schemes. 

Critics accuse China of using aid to advance geopolitical goals, rather than to help the world’s poor, and they highlight the harm this assistance may cause in recipient countries. Such criticisms are leveled at all foreign aid. But at first glance, China’s variety looks particularly unpromising, even by aid skeptics’ standards.

For starters, the fact that more than 300 Chinese government institutions and state-owned enterprises financed the country’s 13,000-plus projects, with little involvement from private entities, supports suspicions that the Chinese state is using aid as a political tool. And, unlike other large donors, China does not condition its development aid on recipient countries’ institutions or politics. This further increases the concern that Chinese assistance will be misdirected and fail to fulfill foreign aid’s nominal purpose of promoting sustainable economic development in poor countries.

The mode of Chinese aid delivery also is unusual. China typically provides development finance in the form of loans, at either highly subsidized or market interest rates, for large infrastructure projects. The contracts generally stipulate that the recipient country must spend a large share of the money with a given Chinese firm, which provides all materials and labor needed to complete the project.

Not surprisingly, recipient countries worry about their growing debt to China. Meanwhile, critics contend, the benefits of Chinese aid are unclear. Importing Chinese workers to realize projects may limit capacity-building within recipient countries, and even put downward pressure on the wages of local workers.

But recent studies show that while there is some truth in these concerns, appearances can be deceiving. To be sure, political motives do underpin Chinese overseas aid, but they relate more to easing domestic problems than to achieving foreign domination. One recent study documents how the Chinese government’s desire to quell political unrest at home drives a large proportion of the country’s overseas aid. For example, when Chinese workers protest, the central government often allocates foreign-aid contracts to large state-owned firms in the area. These companies then hire additional employees and send labor and materials to recipient countries for several years to build roads, ports, or cell-phone towers.

Politically, therefore, aid is a win-win for China. Aid money helps to reduce domestic unemployment, which presumably eases social tensions, and the recipient country is grateful for the financial assistance. US food aid operates on a similar principle: the US government buys up wheat in boom production years to provide a secure price floor for American farmers, and then sends the excess food to poor countries as bilateral aid.

But the most important revelation from recent economic studies is that Chinese aid increases GDP growth, household consumption, and employment in recipient countries. So, contrary to conventional wisdom, the benefits of Chinese foreign aid spill over to ordinary citizens.

In fact, as difficult as it may be for many to accept these findings, they are not surprising. Most economists, as well as officials at institutions such as the World Bank, agree that modern infrastructure is key to promoting economic growth in poor countries. Yet, the countries that are most in need of such infrastructure are frequently the ones with the most dysfunctional institutions, which is often the reason why these countries are poor and have been unable to build their own infrastructure in the first place.

In such cases, Chinese aid can provide a neat solution. Because Chinese firms bring in their own workers and materials and do not rely on local supply chains, they are largely insulated from local graft and corruption.

Moreover, the infrastructure that China builds can have wide-ranging benefits even if the recipient country’s government is uninterested in its citizens’ welfare. A new road connecting a mine to a port also provides access to transportation for the people who live along it, encouraging development there. Telecom towers built for government purposes can increase information flow and market access for farmers. Electric power lines along a road or railway can also provide lighting that allows local children to learn to read.

Chinese aid’s undoubted flaws will come into sharper focus as researchers devote more attention to the subject. But China’s political motivations are not necessarily bad. The fact that aid can sometimes benefit the poor despite selfish motivations is a promising fact for recipient countries. After all, no donor country commits such large amounts of assistance for entirely altruistic reasons.

Based on what researchers know, Chinese aid seems to be a rare example of development assistance that systematically benefits recipient countries in a meaningful way. Taking a closer look may prove useful to policymakers in other countries who are interested in improving the efficacy of foreign aid. 

FOCAC 2021: China and Africa need each other more than ever

by Hannah Ryder for African Business 

The factors that drove China to commit $60bn to African countries at the last FOCAC in 2018 remain as strong as ever, but the outcomes of this year's forum remain uncertain. 

This time three years ago, I was in Beijing, China, receiving queries from journalists about whether China would be lending more finance to African countries at the seventh summit of the then 18-year-old Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). 

As one journalist put it: “Dozens of African countries have accumulated billions in Chinese debt with some said to be in debt distress. Is Beijing likely to cut back on lending to African countries?” 

At the time, I was circumspect of both this framing as well as the accusations that China was enticing countries into “debt traps”. Nevertheless, I was not about to take bets. The only point I was sure of was that more finance pledged would be a positive outcome for meeting Africa’s infrastructure deficit gaps, not a negative one.

In the end, at the 2018 meeting China recommitted to a total of $60bn of loans, grants and investment to the continent over the coming three years, the same amount it had committed to at the previous summit in 2015.

Fast forward to three years later and I am having a feeling of déjà vu. I am receiving very similar queries from journalists and others, with some slight shifts in emphasis. 

Today, the debt trap language is no longer used – having been thoroughly dissected by leading experts such as Deborah Brautigam. Instead, journalists now bring to the fore the language of African debt distress, particularly given that many African countries have faced significant fiscal challenges from the health and economic impacts of Covid-19.

In addition, a new concern is expressed that China’s economy may be slowing down due to post-Covid internal reforms. Yet China’s growth in 2020 was unexpectedly high, due to the country’s quick Covid recovery.

Others ask whether China’s appetite for loans is decreasing, presenting figures that show China’s estimated loan disbursements to Africa reducing since 2016, often not realising that 2016 was an outlier due to a very large commitment to one country – Angola. Some commentators even suggest that China is now “realising” just how “difficult” and “risky” it is to provide finance to African and other developing countries.

Those of you who read my op-eds will know I find these arguments somewhat specious. There is evidence of unjustified Africa risk premiums in credit ratings and bond issuance, and I have explained in previous columns how debt distress analysis – by design – can exaggerate perceptions of African risk.

Fortunately for African countries in need of both concessional and commercial loans, Chinese stakeholders do not primarily use these ratings to determine their financial decisions. As I have said before in these columns, it is crucial to focus on the quality of what African governments use loans for.

If loans are used for infrastructure that enables citizens to raise their productivity and create new business markets or models – infrastructure such as rail, industrial energy or internet cables – rather than recurrent expenditure, and interest rates are kept low, China and others can expect to get their loans back.

How much will China commit this year?

So what will determine whether China commits another $60bn, less, or more at the forthcoming FOCAC conference, due to be hosted in Senegal in November? Will China make any such commitment at all?

The fact is, FOCAC is quite unique among so-called “Africa plus one” summits. It has generated some of the largest ever financial commitments to African countries on the part of a single country.

It is also unique within similar “China plus others” forums – most others have never involved financial commitments, even though other developing countries do aim to get Chinese loans. While there are other lessons and policy areas to borrow from the other forums, it will be perceived by Africans as a significant negative shift from China if this unique commitment were to now be done away with.

Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the factors that drove China to commit $60bn to African countries remain just as persuasive now, if not more so. The Chinese government is aware that African countries aim to become middle income countries, to eradicate poverty, and industrialise. While China currently imports primarily natural resources from African countries, China does not think this development will compete with its long-term economic interests.

China in many ways needs Africa to become the world’s largest manufacturing hub. Wages in China continue to rise, meaning the incentives to offshore labour-intensive manufacturing to cheaper destinations remain. With a growing youth population, providing concessional loans to African governments for the logistical infrastructure to make the Africa hub a reality doesn’t feel like aid, it feels like a good business investment. China’s new 2035 strategy does not imply any change from this view.

Added to this, from an African perspective, infrastructure gaps have unfortunately widened since Covid-19. Digital trade, e-learning and local supply chains are all new needs revealed by Covid-19, all of which require more infrastructure not less. Economic recovery for African countries through strengthened trade and logistics is urgent. And an appropriate climate response also requires investing now in more green and resilient power and transport infrastructure, not less.

All outcomes are up for grabs

Finally, I am circumspect about arguments that China will significantly reduce loan sizes, or shift from lending to direct investment, including by focusing on Public Private Partnerships.

Yes, China is becoming more confident with international PPPs, building on its domestic experience, but many African countries are rightly cautious about applying these to certain sectors due to negative experience from 1980s and 1990s privatisation, and PPPs do take time to design appropriately. China knows from its own growth model that private finance or equity is not a substitute for public debt – it is a complement.

Three years ago, though circumspect, I refused to take bets, which means I will still avoid bets today. But if the past is anything to go by, all outcomes are up for grabs in Dakar. Let’s watch this space together. 

‘Everywhere and Nowhere to be Seen’: How China’s role in the GERD dispute challenges Beijing’s non-interference principle

By Lisa Klaassen in LSE

• China has played a key role in paving the road for the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), changing the historical balance of forces between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.
• The ongoing dispute and mutual distrust between the riparian states is placing increasing pressure on China’s international diplomacy, and in particular its non-interference policy.
• Contrary to Beijing’s rhetoric, China’s strategic diplomatic, political, economic and security engagement suggests that it is evolving towards increasingly proactive geopolitical intervention.

China’s growing economic, political and diplomatic foothold in Africa is often told in alarming terms of natural resource extraction, debt traps and neo-colonialist land grabs. Amidst local African instabilities and conflicts, Beijing has continued to publicly pledge its non-interference policy, presenting itself as a neutral ‘no strings attached’ alternative to the political conditionality of the West. Yet perhaps China’s most consequential participation in Africa’s evolving political economy is one which has rarely been scrutinised. In the last decade, Chinese actors have been instrumental in financing and constructing ambitious hydro-infrastructure projects across Africa, fuelling the continent’s unprecedented ‘dam boom’. Moreover, China’s entanglement in the intrastate dispute over the construction of Africa’s largest hydropower plant, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), suggests that Beijing’s non-interference principle is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

In the 1980s and 1990s, when the World Bank ceased funding major hydroelectric projects in the developing world, African dams appeared destined to become a historical relic, associated with cost overruns, human displacement, and extensive environmental damage such as the flooding of fertile land. The game changer for Africa’s energy infrastructure, observes Prof Harry Verhoeven of Columbia University and convenor of the Oxford University China-Africa Network (OUCAN), was China. Beijing was consequential for the Nile basin in two fundamental ways: (1) it emerged as an alternative funder of large-scale development projects, and (2) Chinese actors had the technical expertise, political support and proven domestic track record to build hugely ambitious dam programmes.

“China’s return to the region changed the balance of forces between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia,” Verhoeven says. Despite being a downstream country, Egypt has historically been the ‘hydro-hegemon’ of the Nile — the state with the largest population, wealthiest economy, strongest military forces, and closest ties with great powers like the United Kingdom (until the 1950s), the Soviet Union (until the 1970s), and currently the United States. For most of the twentieth century, the Blue Nile was dominated by Cairo, and, to a lesser extent, Khartoum, as was legally established by the controversial 1929 and 1959 ‘Nile Agreement’ treaties. But in the wake of Egypt’s destabilising Arab Spring, Ethiopia’s 2011 launch of the GERD radically altered the region’s hydropower dynamics, aiming to catapult the country’s economy from aid dependency to an African hegemon.

While Addis Ababa has financed much of the project domestically, Beijing has provided significant funds for related infrastructure. “China sees the building of infrastructure, usually at a profit for Chinese state-owned companies, as a way to increase influence within African governments,” says Dr David Shinn, former American ambassador to Ethiopia and professor at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. In 2013, China granted US $1.2 billion in loans to build power transmission lines between the dam and local towns and cities. Following a 2019 visit of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to Beijing, China promised an additional US $1.8 billion to advance the expansion of Ethiopia’s renewable energy sector. Chinese companies — including Sinohydro, the Gezhouba Group, Voith Hydro Shanghai and the state-owned China International Water and Electricity Corporation — have also been central to the construction of the dam. Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) contracted China’s Gezhouba Group for US $40.1 million in 2019, expecting them to “work aggressively in partnership with other companies” to finalise the GERD on schedule.

It is a common misconception, Shinn observes, that Chinese infrastructure projects in Africa are altruistic “investments” rather than profit-led “commercial deals”. “Most Africans are not aware that this is how it works,” Shinn says. “They assume incorrectly that it is a gift from China or an “investment” by China. It is an investment by the African government because it must eventually pay the bill.” In 2011, Ethiopia’s late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi remarked that “China has been playing an irreplaceable role in our economy. It has unparalleled contribution toward funding infrastructure activities.” Hailemariam Desalegn, who was deputy prime minister at the time, emphasised the comparative advantage of Chinese loans to Washington Consensus-style reforms: “We like the Chinese way of doing things, because they don’t say ‘do this, don’t do that’ — there are no preconditions.”

But the absence of political preconditions has become increasingly unsustainable for Beijing. Whereas China has historically fostered diplomatic and economic partnerships with Sudan and Ethiopia, the last 10 years have evinced a growing intensification of Chinese interest in Egypt, who perceives the GERD as an “existential threat” to the country’s water security. By the end of 2021, 80% of the dam is projected to be complete, with an approximate timeline of seven years to fill the basin. Egyptian authorities have demanded Ethiopia to decelerate in order to reduce the strain on Egypt’s water supplies and prevent the further loss of arable land.

Following Ethiopia’s rejection, Omar Semeida, head of Egypt’s Conference Party, called on China to “exercise more diplomatic pressure on the Ethiopian government in a bid to spare the entire region any risk of instability, and to sign a legally binding agreement with the downstream countries”. But because of China’s desire to maintain its three bilateral relationships, it has been reluctant to exert pressure on any of the riparian states beyond generic statements. “What is driving this is China’s own insecurities,” suggests Verhoeven, “the fear of being caught in a negotiation or context that [Beijing] doesn’t fully understand or cannot control.” When it comes to the Nile infrastructure, Verhoeven adds, “China is everywhere. Yet when it comes to the crux of the issue, it’s nowhere to be seen.”

In the last 15 to 20 years, China’s strategic geopolitical position has evolved from a complete system of non-intervention to having extensive military presence in Mali, South Sudan and Djibouti. “China’s involvement in Sudan and South Sudan, where it has significant oil interests, is arguably a case where China has interfered in African internal affairs,” says Shinn. Beijing’s dilemma is that the natural resources required to sustain domestic economic growth are frequently located in territories threatened by political instability and armed conflicts. Incidents of Chinese workers being targeted, rebel attacks on Chinese-operated oil facilities in Sudan, and protests following the failure of Chinese-constructed dams to meet basic environmental standards indicate the growing risks underlying Sino-Africa relations. Beijing’s advance towards proactive mediation and conflict resolution can be perceived within a larger trend of great powers taking opportunities to expand influence abroad. “As the engagement matures,” notes Verhoeven, “the perception of opportunity shifts to that of risk, from an offensive strategy to a defensive strategy. The tendency of great powers is to increasingly translate that risk into political influence. Soft power becomes translated into something harder.”

Domestically, the non-interference principle has remained part of Beijing’s rhetoric that promotes “building a community with shared future for mankind”. In July 2021, Zhang Jun, permanent representative of China to the UN, called for the resumption of negotiations between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan, emphasising that “China sincerely hopes that the three countries, in the spirit of friendly cooperation, will resume dialogue and consultation as soon as possible”. Yet China’s reluctance to intervene with the Nile dam conflict, Verhoeven suggests, has little to do with the non-interference policy: “it has everything to do with China’s growing exposure to Egypt and its uncertainty about how to manage a multilateral, transboundary River Basin context – much more than any principle developed in 1949.” With so much at stake in the construction of the GERD, China is being increasingly pressured to assume a more active role in the dispute. If Beijing continues to cite the non-interference policy, it risks undermining the relationships fostered with both Addis Ababa and Cairo, and jeopardising future partnerships.

The confrontation between Africa’s riparian states illustrates how dynamic, complex and contradictory the evolving politics of water security are at local, regional and global levels. As the climate crisis is putting unprecedented pressure on water and food supplies, the management of transboundary resources is more pertinent to global peace and security agendas than ever before. While resource scarcity can precipitate mutual distrust and intrastate conflict, it could also be used to encourage regional and international cooperation. Inger Anderson, Executive Director of UNEP, observed that the Nile has sustained livelihoods in Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan for thousands of years. “Well-planned hydraulic infrastructure on a shared river course can be a source of enhanced collaboration, and need not be a zero-sum game,” she noted.

Similarly, the Nile conflict could offer a unique opportunity for collaboration between great powers like China, the U.S. and Russia, who have traditionally been locked in a geopolitical power competition. Amidst growing concern about a New Cold War, Beijing and Washington could use their respective water diplomacy with the Nile States as a stimulus to resolve bilateral tensions. Particularly as we draw closer to the “biggest threat modern humans have ever faced” – inevitable and imminent climate change – building trust, finding compromises and concentrating on mutual interests has never been more crucial.

The Plague of Military Coups and the African Union’s Peace and Security Dilemma

“A French-trained special forces officer, a disoriented and shaken 83-year-old president bundled out of the [presidential] palace and into a car, and promises of a new constitution and a new order.” So run the headlines about the latest military coup in Guinea that toppled the “disoriented and shaken 83-year-old” Alpha Condé. African countries are no strangers to military (and bloody) takeover. It is, after all, estimated that African countries have recorded no less than 200 coups since the years of independence, counting both successful and failed coup attempts.

In West Africa alone, Guinea is the third country to experience a violent transfer of power in the past five months. In April, Chad went through a “covert coup” that brought Mahamat Idriss Deby to power, following the sudden death of his father, Idris Deby, who spent more than three decades in power and was one of Africa's longest-serving presidents. In May, Mali experienced a second coup in just nine months, after the transitional government was overthrown by the military. But had the attempted coup on the night of March 30-31 in Niger succeeded, the unwanted statistics could have been even more staggering. Undoubtedly, this poses enormous challenges to Africa’s broader peace and security environment and, especially, to the African Union (AU)’s ambitious goal of silencing the guns across the continent and achieving sustainable peace and security.

The Need for Proactiveness, Consistency, and Boldness

Despite the complexity and distinctiveness of each case of the military takeover, one can make the case that more proactiveness and consistency from both the AU and its regional bodies (Regional Economic Communities, RECs) could reduce such growing occurrences. Just like Mali and Chad, Guinea has a long history of instability and military takeovers. Yet not enough was done to prevent Alpha Condé from extending his rule to a controversial and highly contested third term. In 2010, he became the first democratically elected leader in Guinea since its independence. But after completing the constitutionally mandated two term-limit, he amended the constitution to stay in power. Unsurprisingly, the move sparked widespread protests that were met with force and brutality. Thus, the coup came in the context of simmering and growing discontent in the country, which the military successfully took advantage of. When the authority and the legitimacy of a government are widely contested, it finds no ground to stand on when or if tested. We saw that in Afghanistan before Condé's fall, where the United States and its allies thought to have built a functioning state during the 20 years of occupation. But the people on the ground (especially the Afghan army) knew too well that they had no leadership to defend. A bold and proactive African Union and its West African regional body could have surely seen this coming.

The lack of consistency is another major faux pas for the continental body. The African Union is built on a set of common and shared values, norms, and principles, as stipulated in its various legal documents, most notable the Constitutive Act but also the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance and the Lomé Declaration on unconstitutional changes of governments. A major and most recent example of inconsistency in relation to the topic at hand is the open endorsement of what was clearly an unconstitutional change of government in Chad following the death of its former president Idriss Déby. By designating Déby’s son, the military power grab clearly violated Article 81 of the Chadian constitution, which states that the president of the National Assembly would act as interim president in such circumstances and calls for elections to be held within 45–90 days. Instead, the military quickly dissolved the National Assembly and the government and suspended the constitution. It set itself to assume total power over the 18-month transition period, with the possibility of further extending it. The inconsistent decision-making on such issues will surely help erode the AU’s authority.

The good news, however, is that it is not too late for the continental body to prove its relevance. And perhaps Guinea could serve as a wakeup call that will finally awaken it from the functional and institutional ineptness. That is, while the AU has worked hard to disincentivize coups and other forms of unconstitutional changes of government, it has not done enough to eradicate their root causes, which include election tampering, constitutional amendments by incumbents to stay in power, failed governance, etc.

Good to Know: The decision on Chad contrasts sharply with its previous decisions that almost applied membership suspension of the concerned country and various sanctions of the soldiers involved. Thus, the AU has suspended any state where the military or armed groups have clearly grabbed power over the past 20 years (as shown below).

Country	Nature of the change in power	Date	PSC decision
The Central African Republic	François Bozizé, with the help of mercenaries, overthrows president André Kolingba	March 2003	Immediate suspension
Togo	At the death of Gnassingbé Eyadema, Faure Gnassingbé comes to power with the support of the military and after a controversial revision of the constitution	February 2005	Immediate suspension (Prior to the PSC decision, Togo was suspended by ECOWAS, which also imposed sanctions on Togolese authorities)
Mauritania	A military junta led by Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall overthrows president Maaouiya Ould Taya	August 2005	Immediate suspension
Mauritania	Sidi Ould Cheick Abdallahi is overthrown by Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, head of the presidential guard	August 2008	Immediate suspension
Guinea	Captain Moussa Dadis Camara takes power following the death of Lansana Conté	December 2008	Suspension within five days at a second meeting of the PSC on Guinea
Madagascar	Part of the army overthrows president Marc Ravalomanana and brings Andry Rajoelina to power	March 2009	Immediate suspension
Niger	Mamadou Tandja is overthrown by soldiers	February 2010	Immediate suspension
Mali	Soldiers overthrow president Amani Toumani Touré	March 2012	Immediate suspension
Guinea-Bissau	Soldiers overthrow the interim president Raimundo Pereira	April 2012	Immediate suspension
The Central African Republic	Rebels overthrow president François Bozizé	March 2013	Immediate suspension and sanctions
Egypt	Soldiers led by Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrew President Mohamed Morsi	July 2013	Immediate suspension
Burkina Faso	General Gilbert Diendéré and elements under his command briefly overthrow transitional president Michel Kafando	September 2015	Immediate suspension and sanctions
Sudan	The military deposes president Omar al-Bashir following months of public protests against the regime	April 2019	Delayed suspension:
			the PSC initially gave the military two weeks to hand over power to civilians. The deadline was subsequently extended to 60 days. Following protests and the killing of civilians, the PSC suspended Sudan about three weeks before the new deadline.
Mali	Soldiers depose president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta following several weeks of public protests against the regime	August 2020	Immediate suspension
Mali	Soldiers toppled the transitional government to now take over complete control	June 2021	Immediate suspension

Africa's Fallen Stars

Western democracies should learn that the key to establishing liberal values in Africa lies with institutions, not individuals

                       By Carine Kaneza Nantulya for Persuasion

Western democracies should have learned an important foreign policy lesson by now: Placing trust in individual leaders rather than in democratic institutions often leads to disaster. This has happened all over the world, with depressing frequency. Ethiopia’s recent descent into authoritarianism and armed conflict—a mere two years after its prime minister accepted the Nobel Peace Prize at Oslo’s City Hall—is an astonishing example of the all-too-familiar story.

These leaders come into office promising to lift their countries out of crisis by safeguarding human rights, building new democratic institutions, and securing the rule of law. For a while, their countries seem to make strides, and the West holds them up as models for reform. In time, however, these once-promising leaders abandon their early commitments and fall from grace as their countries slip back into crisis.

Here are some of Africa’s fallen stars: countries and leaders at first welcomed wholeheartedly by Western democratic governments, now failing to live up to their promises. 

Ethiopia

Abiy Ahmed Ali rose to power in 2018 following widespread, popular protests and his promises to democratize Ethiopia. After decades of repression under the Ethiopia People’s Democratic Revolutionary Front, Abiy projected an ambitious reformist agenda hailed as a political breakthrough for the country. He continued to release political prisoners, a process initiated by his predecessor; invited exiles back; and implemented a number of legal reforms. For negotiating a peace agreement with Ethiopia’s arch-rival, Eritrea, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.  

Domestically, however, the authorities were cracking down on dissent. Government security agents carried out abusive operations against individuals and armed groups in the regional state of Oromia. Intercommunal violence and attacks against minority communities escalated in several regions, leading to killings, displacement, and property damage.

Then, in November 2020, Abiy ordered military operations against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the dominant party in the former ruling coalition. Under Abiy’s watch, the Ethiopian military and regional forces have both committed their own atrocities and failed to prevent serious abuses by Eritrean forces operating inside Ethiopian borders in the Tigray region. Over 90 percent of the Tigray population now requires emergency food aid, according to the World Food Program.  

Abiy’s fall from grace, from a darling of the international community to the subject of widespread condemnation, was swift but, to closer observers, perhaps unsurprising. A former soldier and founder of Ethiopia’s repressive surveillance and security agency, Abiy apparently never fully outgrew his military roots. 

Chad

On taking power in 1990 after the brutal eight-year rule of Hissene Habre, the late Chadian president, Idriss Déby Itno promised to create a new society founded on democracy. His government convened a national conference to draw up a new constitution, one that assured fundamental freedoms and basic human rights. But the promise did not last long. Chad’s first elections, in 1996, were marred by allegations of fraud, a pattern that has repeated itself ever since.

By the mid-2000s, Déby’s Patriotic Salvation Movement had abandoned its reformist agenda and focused on entrenching its leader in power indefinitely. Déby rolled back the reforms introduced in the 1990s and steadily militarized the state and key institutions. The more Déby entrenched himself, the more members of his inner circle broke away and joined rebel groups.

There was hardly any effort by international actors to step in. Déby positioned himself as a staunch security ally of major Western powers such as France and the U.S. in a region wracked by armed insurgencies and instability, and his excesses were overlooked. When Déby died on the battlefield in April, days before starting his sixth term, he left a government with a long track record of cracking down on fundamental freedoms. His son, General Mahamat Idris Déby, has replaced him. Thirty years after the promise of democracy, Chad’s government is instead ruled by dynastic succession. 

Uganda

Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986, castigating leaders who cling to power and overstay their welcome. Yet he is still in power 35 years later. In 2017, his government removed presidential term and age limits from the constitution, effectively setting him up to be president for life. The most recent elections, in January, were marred by violence and intimidation. Security forces killed protesters; carried out enforced disappearances, with some of the victims turning up dead or severely tortured; and arrested members of political opposition parties and presidential candidates.  

Opposition politicians have petitioned the International Criminal Court to investigate Museveni’s alleged human rights abuses. Western powers, though, have regarded him as a guarantor of stability in the region. He committed Uganda to the Global War on Terrorism; sent forces to Somalia to fight an armed group linked to Al-Qaeda; and even allowed private firms to recruit Ugandan manpower to protect U.S. embassies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. once famously hailed Museveni as part of “a new breed of African leaders,” and he was described as second in stature only to Nelson Mandela. Oxford University started a scholarship in his name to support Africans pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy. Although he has far from lived up to these accolades, he has leveraged his reputation as a Western ally to shore up his power and international image. 

South Sudan

When South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011, the international community had high hopes, believing that the new country would emerge as an example for democracy, religious freedom, and national unity. It had, after all, come about following a 22-year armed struggle by the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement against the repressive rule of Sudan’s Islamist government.

When Salva Kiir became president of the new nation, he promised to create a democratic, peaceful, and united South Sudan. But the stability and optimism wouldn't last long. In mid-December of 2013, a vicious civil war triggered by a power struggle between President Kiir and his then-deputy, Riek Machar, and other senior SPLM leaders threw the country into chaos. The war was marked by horrific cruelty and violence. Civilians bore the brunt of war, with all sides targeting them for abuse.

In their rush to support the newest state on the international stage, world leaders had ignored signs of this impending crisis. The region that would become South Sudan had suffered two brutal civil wars during the last half-century. As a result, in 2011, the new leadership inherited a country plagued by corruption, neglect, ethnic and regional tension, and displacement; millions remain refugees both within and outside of the country. The international community’s optimism had blinded it to the instability beneath South Sudan’s promising exterior.

Consequently, a decade into independence, and despite the ongoing implementation of a 2018 peace agreement between President Kiir and rebel factions, the promised dividends of statehood—including stability, basic freedoms, and economic development—remain elusive.  

What should the international community learn from these examples?

First, institutions, not individuals, are the best predictors of long-term reform. That is the case no matter how capable the leaders are and how much they profess their democratic credentials. Too often, the international community has feted promising leaders in its search for success stories, first ignoring warning signs and then under-investing in strengthening institutions.

Second, sacrificing the rule of law, human rights, and democracy in the name of stability has tragic consequences, both for the people of authoritarian regimes and for the future prospects for democracy across Africa. Moreover, each of the countries highlighted remains deeply unstable—a sign that sacrificing democracy in the name of stability is rarely successful.

Authoritarian world powers, including China and Russia, often design their foreign policy with an overriding focus on stability. When Western democracies do the same, they strengthen the argument that there is little fundamental difference between authoritarian government calculations and democratic ones. Instead, the international community of liberal democracies must distinguish itself and encourage the hard work of building institutions devoted to liberal and democratic values.

Carine Kaneza Nantulya is Africa advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

China and Russia Both Cooperating and Competing in Africa

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 18 Issue: 103

By: Paul Goble

Russia and China are typically lumped together as the two new challengers to the role of Western countries in Africa. They are certainly that, but they are pursuing rather differing strategies and, thus, are virtually certain to find themselves at odds in the future. Moscow has sought short-term advantage, by which it hopes to profit from Western neglect. But as a result, the Russian side is likely to fall even further behind China, which is pursuing a much longer-term approach that involves integrating sub-Saharan Africa into Beijing’s One Belt, One Road program (also known as the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI). For the present, these two approaches may not be completely at odds; however, in the longer term, they are prone to be, with Russia having to accept a role subordinate to China in Africa or give up its current relationships with African countries. That is not something President Vladimir Putin is likely to be happy about and may even become an increasing source of conflict between Moscow and Beijing. 

Russia’s outreach to Africa had heretofore been defined by an almost exclusive focus on what might be called “targets of opportunity”: weak countries with governments threatened by unrest and lacking outside support from the West or from China but that have important raw materials reserves, such as gold and diamonds, that the Russian regime might profit from (see EDM, April 23, 2020, April 29, 2020, January 20, 2021). Indeed, in the words of one Moscow-based commentator, Aleksandr Golts, Putin has acted in Africa on the assumption that when he does intervene there, Russia will be the strongest or even the only outside player that matters. The problem with this Kremlin-perceived “Jurassic Park world,” as Golts terms it, is that it diverges from the reality on the ground. And in fact, other powers, including a rising China, act in ways that preclude Russia from achieving its goals there because others—China included—are willing to invest into further developing the continent and not just exploiting the status quo (Ej.ru, October 29, 2019). 

China approaches Africa as it does most parts of the world, with longer-term objectives in mind. In Africa, this has meant inter alia building east-west rail lines to link the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic together, thus creating yet another avenue for the expansion of trade and influence between this continent and the Asia-Pacific region (see China Brief, July 22, 2010 and April 9, 2018). To make that happen, China has invested heavily in countries along this route, something that wins it more friends than does Russia’s siloviki (security services) driven and heavy-handed exploitation of their resources. As China’s BRI project continues to expand, the conflict between Beijing’s and Moscow’s rival approaches in Africa—and more generally—is becoming clearer. And at least some in the Russian capital are beginning to take notice. 

The well-connected Moscow-based analytical portal Real Tribune draws on Chinese reporting to suggest that China is stealing a march on all other outside powers because of its long-term Africa strategy and because it has invested more in the countries along the railway routes it is building across the content. In other words, the piece argues, China is offering more than simply exploiting the economic resources of these countries, as European colonial powers did in the past or as Russia, in many respects, is doing now (Real Tribune, South China Morning Post, June 27). 

According to the Real Tribune analysts, “China is building railways in Africa in support of the local economies.” As a result, “over the last decade, Beijing has strengthened its position as the most important contractor and sponsor of infrastructure in Africa,” building not only railroads but ports and supporting facilities that naturally help China, while also promoting the development of the national economies. For that reason, and bolstered by the fact that China is also non-white, Beijing has outcompeted European powers, which have cut back their investments or had a legacy of exploiting their former colonies. By that same token, Chinese activities have outmatched Russia’s, with the latter country not in a position, economically, to invest anything close to what China is spending—some $1.3 billion in the past several years alone (Real Tribune, June 27). 

Moreover, China is active across the continent and not just in troubled countries, building transcontinental railways rather than simply tracks from the interiors of some countries to coastal ports, as other powers have done. At present, Real Tribune notes, Beijing is working both west to east in Nigeria and east to west in Tanzania. And these plans—which the Chinese loudly promote and Africans appreciate—mean that China may very well be on its way to becoming the dominant outside power on the continent. In that event, Moscow will be forced to recalculate its own strategy given that there is now a real outside power in Africa, not the power vacuum Putin has counted on in the past. 

And Chinese outlets are playing up something else. They are pointing to the fact that what China is doing presently builds on past actions. It is not a short-term policy that Beijing can and will change overnight—a sharp contrast to Moscow’s activities in sub-Saharan Africa, where the Russian approach has been on-again, off-again. Even now, the Chinese are citing former Communist leader Mao Zedong’s observation in 1965 to Julius Nyerere, who was then the president of Tanzania: “In the past, foreigners built railroads in Africa to steal Africa’s wealth. The Chinese are doing so with an entirely different goal,” he said. “They are building them to help us both in the development of our national economies” (Real Tribune, June 27). 

Up to now and perhaps for a few years more, China’s new railroads in Africa may help Russia achieve some of its goals; but beyond that, Chinese railways there will have a quite different impact, one that will work against Russian interests and the current tactics Moscow is using to promote them. 

Reflecting On the Challenges of Studying “Africa” Objectively

“Africa” is a common knowledge, through daily news and pseudo-scientific publications. That is, in addition to being watched from afar, it is constantly talked about and heard of, but usually for the wrong reasons: If it is not much about a military coup in Mali (again), it would be about the intractable civil war in Libya, or the repeated terrorist attacks across the continent. Corruption is another trademark plaguing the continent, not unlike the "third termism", extreme poverty, widespread (youth) unemployment, etc. Thus, very "few objects are indeed as loaded with ordinary knowledge as this continent which appears daily in street discussions, in newspapers and on television screens" (Gazibo, 2010).

Yet, behind this “ordinary” and generalized knowledge about Africa, there is an inherent risk, especially for any observer who wants to take a lucid look at this continent that the imagination wants to be as distant as it is mysterious. That is a major challenge confronting any attempt to have an objective look at the continent. Faced with such a risk, there is a need to resort to scientific methodological approach, anchored on a neutral view of the observer and oriented towards the search for objectivity. Thus, the widespread calls for respecting “a certain number of methodological precautions” aims to prevent endeavors that claim to be scientific from being nothing other than a prop cliché or an equally damaging “angelism with a redemptive aim”, a kind of defensive posture devoid of critical self-reflection.

If the first is the product of a long and cruel history based on slavery and colonization, the second is intended to be defensive against that historical encroachment. The problem, however, is that reproducing these engrained clichés completely disregards the basic methodological principle about not making value judgments. But the uncritical “angelism” equally contravenes methodological principles about keeping objective distance and an impassionate engagement with the subject matter. But here, I’m digressing.

What is of particular interest to me here is a reflection on the conditions of production of (scientific) knowledge on Africa. As mentioned, the origin of the prejudices on Africa, of the crystallization of the negative image associated with this continent as well as the consequent obstacles to the neutrality of research on this subject matter, “Africa”, could be traced back to slavery and then colonization. In fact, according to Gazibo (2010), among other, these two phenomena were crucial moments for strengthening the distorted vision developed on Africa. Unfortunately, that logic still nourishes many works devoted to the continent. Yet, the ultimate and critical task that should preoccupy us all is for these endeavors to be faithful in their analyses of the subject of study. In order words, depicting the continent as it is with its complexity and in its ups and downs.

China’s Role in Regional Integration in Africa: The Case of East African Community

This article, published in Stanford International Policy Review, is a recent analysis I co-authored. It mainly deals with China's engagement with regional integration in Africa. We dwell on the East African Community (EAC) as a case study, mainly focusing on China's role in infrastructure development in the region and its trade policy toward the regional bloc. 

Africa’s Peace and Prosperity Begin at Home

For too long, Africa has been a strategic plaything of world powers. By bolstering its internal cohesion and economic integration, the continent can become a strong geopolitical force with an independent and unified voice on important global issues. 

Africans must take responsibility for our continent’s affairs. We have all the ingredients we need to succeed, starting with a growing population – including a large and increasingly educated cohort of young people – and a favorable trade and investment environment. And now, determined to usher in an era of African peace and prosperity, we have a mature institutional platform through which to forge, articulate, assert, and defend our common interests under an independent, unified African foreign policy. 

At a time when protectionist beggar-thy-neighbor policies are on the rise globally, Africa is poised to implement a single common market in the form of the African Continental Free Trade Area. This pact will lay new foundations for continent-wide economic growth: the World Bank recently forecast that AfCFTA could boost Africa’s income by $450 billion by 2035 and lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty. In addition, closer economic integration within the region will inevitably make every country a stakeholder in its neighbors’ security, thereby advancing the greater cause of continental peace.

As Africa integrates, it is increasingly setting its own development agenda and foreign-policy priorities freely and independently of other powers. This represents a sharp break with Africa’s historical role as a geopolitical plaything of world powers.

But dangers remain, not least in the Horn of Africa – a historically volatile region that suddenly has become the epicenter of a global scramble for strategic influence. Powerful adversaries have established military bases in the Horn that are too close to each other for comfort. Many have invested in the region’s seaports, and some have gone further inland in search of water and arable land to produce their food abroad.

The heightened interest partly stems from the region’s locational advantages as both the bridge that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and a vital entry point to the wider African market. Left unchecked, this unhealthy rivalry and competition in our backyard will likely end up sucking all of us into yet another fratricidal proxy war. Competing visions and rival loyalties to outside forces risk creating fragile states and power vacuums, turning us into easy fodder for others.

Africa’s ability to become a strong geopolitical force hinges on its own internal cohesion and economic integration. An Africa that increasingly trades with itself will create an internal market large enough for its producers to benefit from economies of scale. By investing in value-added activities, these firms can help to ensure that the continent is no longer merely a supplier of raw materials and a market for other countries’ goods and services. 

How the Galwan Valley Standoff Could Spell the End of South-South Romance

    This piece originally appeared in E-International Relations

The expanding geographic outreach of South-South Cooperation (SSC) in recent years has become a vector of hope in developing countries’ efforts to achieve development and prosperity. But the recent border clash between India and China, the world’s most populous nations and two of the most important engines of SSC, could prove a real test to SSC’s principles of peaceful coexistence, mutual benefit, and third-world solidarity.  In other words, not only does the ongoing rift between the two leading voices of the South-South momentum make a mockery of the two countries’ professed commitment to the cause of the disadvantaged of the international system, but it also threatens the Global South’s ‘historic mission’ of promoting a fairer and equal world. The China-India standoff at the Galwan Valley along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Himalayas on June 15 is the deadliest clash between the two nuclear powers in more than 40 years. It also brings tensions between the two countries to their highest point in decades. And while their relations might have always been delicate and oscillating between cooperation and competition, recent developments could prove particularly worrisome for the future of SSC.

The history of SSC is often traced back to 1955, when representatives from 29 Asian and African countries gathered at a conference in Bandung, Indonesia, to not only further economic and technical cooperation among developing countries, but also to allow the downtrodden of the post-1945 global order to join forces against a West-dominated world order. As such, the Bandung conference marked a formalized turning point of Global South solidarity, with attempts to rebuild the international order to provide Southern countries equality of participation in international arenas that had regularly failed to ensure their inclusion.

It was also an opportunity for the newly independent countries to vent their frustrations over the traditional realpolitik of the day. Since then, however, SSC has evolved to become an integral and major part of the international development landscape. A case in point was the adoption of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA) in 1978 to promote and implement technical and development cooperation among developing countries. In addition to driving forth much of the euphoria about its potential, this has also helped make SSC a buzz word in development parlance. The spectacular rise of the likes of China has undeniably played a significant role in that process.

Nonetheless, China’s rise also saw a shift in its diplomatic and foreign policy undertakings. As it emerges from a traditionally defensive diplomatic posture, Beijing is now increasingly perceived as a bold, assertive player fueling its ‘great power’ muscles by projecting its military might, playing the national security card to secure its interests in its immediate vicinity and far beyond. This has especially been the case under the leadership of Xi Jinping, who has repeatedly made it known that China now aspires to be a shaper of global trends. It goes without saying that Beijing’s new foreign policy posture is seen with skepticism as it is strongly reminiscent of a premature hegemonic supremacy that is spelling the end to China’s ‘charm offensive’. The assertive turn of China’s foreign policy, coupled with the increasingly nationalistic posture of Narendra Modi’s India, meant that the resurgence of the Sino-Indian border disputes is not entirely intriguing. If Xi is emboldened by his increasingly embattled ‘China Dream’, Modi seems invigorated by his version of ‘India first’, resulting in heightened risk of a military confrontation between the two nuclear-armed powers.

The standoff and the ensuing breakdown in their relations will have far-reaching consequences for SSC in the foreseeable future, given that the growing rift in New Delhi-Beijing relations is likely to cripple not just their broader engagement but also their respective cooperation with other developing countries. In a widely publicized move yet antithetical to SSC aspirations, India launched a ‘digital strike’ against China, blocking 59 Chinese apps on June 29, including the widely popular Tik Tok (with about 611 million downloads of the app made in the country, India is TikTok’s largest market, according to Sensor Tower). Though New Delhi claims the ban serves to protect India’s ‘sovereignty and security’, it is widely believed to be an economic retribution for the June 15 border clash. Indeed, cross border trade and investment will also suffer, with reports emerging that Modi’s government is cancelling a major railway contract won by a Chinese firm and considering banning the Chinese telecommunications equipment giant Huawei from its 5G network. There has also been a widespread movement to boycott Chinese products. Beyond these bilateral setbacks, however, the rift is also certain to play out in their multilateral engagement with the likes of BRICS and the UN Security Council, which India will soon join as nonpermanent member for the 2021-22 term.

Although the reported withdrawal of Chinese troops from the border area where the standoff took place and the ongoing bilateral talks could help cool the cross-border tensions, they are unlikely to undo the long-term damage and the simmering mutual distrust. Indeed, the strategic mistrust in Sino-Indian relations is likely to become a given, which might have an irredeemable long-term impact on their bilateral as well as multilateral cooperation. It might also deal a major blow to their ability to drive SSC forward in the face of a deadly global pandemic and the melting global economy that is set to hit the developing world the hardest. Clearly, an open and violent conflict between the leading powers of the developing countries does not bode well for the future of SSC and will likely make an irreparable dent in the Global South’s quest to transform the institutions of global governance and make the world a fairer and more equal place. Achieving these ambitious and oft-romanticized goals is mainly dependent on genuine partnership and synergetic cooperation among all parties concerned. This in turn also depends not only on a strong concerted voice from the Global South, but also on the added weight of major southern players such as China and India working together. If anything, the fraught relations between China and India cast a major doubt on such endeavors, while also threatening to end the discursive romance surrounding SSC in much of development space.

While the Galwan Valley standoff continues to underline the fragility of the 1962 agreement between India and China, following the war over their competing claims to the arid border region in the Himalayas, it also brings to light the underlying challenges to the much-touted solidarity of the Global South. As both countries continue their path to becoming ‘great’ nations and indispensable actors on regional and global affairs, the June incident is unlikely to go down as an aberration; rather it might be a harbinger of increasing fraught relations ahead. It could, therefore, be a critical inflection point between the two neighbors, signaling a rocky and treacherous phase of Sino-Indian relations, characterized by strategic mistrust and plenty of animosity. This might well dash the aspirations of the Global South for a better and more comprehensive SSC and put the developing world in a deep predicament for years to come.

The Twilight of an Empire: Racism, Geopolitics, and the American Question

A short version of this article was published in E-International Relations. 

Racism. Racial injustice. Police brutality. Protests. Battlespace. Black Lives Matter: A specter is haunting America—the specter of centuries-old pathologies never really addressed. When the crisis currently roiling America began, following the brutal killing of yet another unarmed black man, it should have been a decidedly domestic crisis. Instead, the outrage following the murder, compounded by the scandal-prone leadership of the Trump administration, has quickly turned what was originally an “American tragedy” into an international one with major geopolitical ramifications for years to come.

The massive demonstrations across the world in solidarity with America’s protestors is just one example of its international dimension. But a more defining factor in the internationalization of this particular saga was surely the violent response by law enforcement officers and the constant attempts to militarize the crisis. 

The self-proclaimed ‘leader of the free world’ was now terrorizing its own citizens, who took to the streets to demand justice and accountability. For many, especially those watching from countries and regions that have long been lectured on human rights issues, the whole episode was another indication of a deep-rooted hegemonic hypocrisy—“do as I say, not as I do.” Unsurprisingly, America’s geopolitical adversaries, in a characteristically opportunistic burst, have been quick to jump on the social justice bandwagon to score a few geopolitical points.

Iran branded Floyd’s death a ‘cold-blooded’ killing that reveals the true nature of the American government. Russia opted for what it usually does: flooding the Internet with divisive messages and seizing the occasion to critique Washington’s ‘repressive’ response to the unrest. Turning the geopolitical dynamics on its head, the Russian Foreign Ministry called on American authorities to respect people’s right to peacefully protest. China was also quick to jump on the fray. Beijing has been heavily reprimanded for its growing totalitarian repression aided by state-of-the-art surveillance technology, epitomized by the suppression of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and the alleged oppression of its Muslim minority in the Xinjiang autonomous region. But, if in April America was able to issue harsh and scathing criticisms against China while Beijing faced a global outcry over the racial profiling and mistreatment of African nationals, the table seems to have turned. Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, posted ‘I can't breathe’ on Twitter, referring to George Floyd’s last words that have become a rallying slogan for demonstrators the world over, while China’s state-media have been actively calling on America to address racial injustice at home and stop interfering in other countries’ internal affairs. 

But the geopolitical battle between Beijing and Washington extended to Africa, where the two powers have been engaging in narrative battles to undermine each other’s broader engagements with and interests in the continent. Nonetheless, it is crucial not to overstate China’s role in Africa’s perception of race and racism issues in America—issues one could refer to as ‘the Great American Question’—if only because the dynamics and the relationship well-outdate China’s modern engagement with the continent.

From a historical vantage point, to talk about America is to talk about African slavery. And understanding that tragic history, I would suggest, is critical to understanding the reactions in Africa to the Great American Question. In July 1964, Malcolm X brought home to his ‘African brothers and sisters’ at the first summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU)—the predecessor of the African Union (AU)—in Cairo, Egypt, the concerns on the fate of Americans of African descent. Malcolm X’s message to African leaders at the summit, like most of his speeches, was a poignant pan-African plea. African-Americans, he said, ‘firmly believe that African problems are our problems and that our problems are African problems.…’ In part, thanks to Malcolm X’s moving imploration, the OAU passed a resolution that condemned ‘the existence of discriminatory practices’ against African-Americans and called on America ‘to intensify... efforts to ensure the total elimination of all forms of discrimination based on race, color or ethnic origin.’ This was just an instance of how America’s foreign policy towards the continent was complicated by brutal racism at home, a fact J.F. Kennedy’s Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, once admitted: ‘the conduct of our foreign policy is handicapped by our record in the field of civil rights and racial discrimination.’

Decades later today, that egregious record still shocks and disheartens many in Africa. So it was only natural that Floyd’s killing drew widespread condemnations in the continent. For instance, the president of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, firmly condemned ‘the murder of George Floyd, which occurred in the United States of America, at the hands of law enforcement officers.’ In his statement, Mahamat recalled the OAU’s historic resolution of 1964 to reaffirm ‘the rejection by the [AU] of persistent discriminatory practices against black citizens of the United States of America.’ Likewise, in an open letter, African writers, ‘who are connected beyond geography,’ denounced the killing and expressed their strongest solidarity with the protestors. Such an outpouring of outcries across the continent forced American embassies in Africa to attempt to control the damage by making an unprecedented move to condemn the murder that took place back home.

But given America’s long history of racial caste system, enforced and sustained through violence and socio-economic oppression, such diplomatic efforts are destined to achieve very little. The foundation of the American promise, an ambitious young African-American senator who would later become America’s first black president told the 2004 Democratic National Convention, is ingrained in Americans’ belief that ‘all men are created equal,’ making it the only place on earth where his story could even be possible. The paradox, however, is that beneath that American exceptionalism also lies the foundation of the Great American Question. Obama himself knows too well how America has long denied its black people the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—the basis of the quintessentially American dream. Indeed, America is proud to have fought and won two world wars to “save” the world from fascism. It is equally proud to have “saved” the world from the oppression of godless communism.

Yet that same America has also failed to liberate its black people from perpetual oppression and subjugation at home. As a product of that brutal reality, Malcolm X warned his audience at the 1964 Cairo summit on how, to people of color, America could be as repressive and dehumanizing as South Africa’s Apartheid regime. Indeed, while the Apartheid regime ‘is like a vicious wolf, openly hostile to black humanity…, America is cunning like a fox, friendly and smiling on the surface, but even more vicious and deadly than the wolf.’ 

In that 1964 African tour, Malcolm X also dismayingly observed, this time in Ghana, that ‘for the twenty millions of [black people] in America who are of African descent,’ there is no American dream. There is only the American nightmare. Today, that nightmare seems to engulf the country and help further tarnish its global standing. The protest and the quickness with which it gained steam might be a clear sign of a troubled nation: Think of the racial injustice, the police brutality, the job losses, and the Covid-19 pandemic, which, instead of being America’s great equalizer it was deemed to be, turned out to be a black plague for Black America. Unfortunately, a clear leadership to steer the nation out of these storms has been wanting. ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts’ is usually something one associates with some nameless militaristic state on the brink of collapse. But this fanning the flame of hatred comes from ‘the leader of the free world.’ Or perhaps, that too is an idea, just like the American dream. Little wonder, some see America becoming a fragile state whose stabilization is off the table in the near term, while others see a much gloomier picture.

America’s democracy was built on the denial of basic humanity to a large portion of its population, while its wealth and power are rooted in the plunder of its black and native inhabitants. And that could well be its undoing today. It is the specter that has been haunting America. But all is not yet lost. If anything, the sustained protests over the past weeks offer a window of opportunity to genuinely atone for these historical wrongs and, perhaps, avoid James Baldwin’s apocalyptic call for “fire next time”.

There is a consensus that racial injustice at home has eroded America’s international standing. That the country has so far failed to reconcile the values and ideals it professes to champion with what is actually happening. Thus, the repeated attempts to give an apparent solidity to pure wind have been a dramatic failure. In 1964, Malcolm X called on heads of independent African states to rescue their ‘long-lost brothers and sisters’ by bringing ‘our problem to the United Nations [Council] on Human Rights.’ Today, Philonise Floyd, George Floyd's brother, is imploring the same institution to help ‘black people in America.’ This presents a clear opportunity for America’s critics to call out its hypocrisy. Surely, Russia and China are among the last places to turn to for human rights protection. But the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman was right: ‘it’s time for the U.S. to drop the mentor’s tone and look in the mirror.’ Only then might it regain its lost grounds, both at home and abroad. 

Beyond the Pandemic: The Struggles of African Nationals in China

Recent racist anti-African incidents in China are just a manifestation of deeply rooted attitudes vis-à-vis ‘blackness’ in China that predate and will likely outlive the coronavirus pandemic. 

This piece appeared in 'Africa is a Country' under the title: China and Africa: A trial by pandemic?

“We are being systematically discriminated against as blacks and African nationals,” a Ghanaian student I spoke to and who has been under forced quarantine in Guangzhou concluded with a shaking voice. And though he has no recent travel history and no particular exposure to the virus, he was forced to take the coronavirus test, which came in negative, unsurprisingly. His was not an isolated incident of discrimination and blatant racism based on skin color and passport.

For the last few weeks, the Chinese province of Guangdong and especially its provincial capital, Guangzhou, became the focus of news reports and social media posts on widespread discriminations and mistreatments of African nationals in the city. Evictions from homes and hotels, people sleeping on the streets, the police forcefully dragging black individuals, forced-quarantine, involuntary and repeated COVID-19 tests, etcetera are some of the accusations that have been widely circulating. But the unprecedented level of outcries and indignations from African countries have also brought to surface China-Africa relations more broadly, with many quick to predict the looming end of the buoyant relationship.

In addition to a rise in imported COVID-19 cases, the targeted discriminations and racism against African nationals started after reports emerged that five Nigerian nationals in the southern city of Guangzhou, who tested positive for Covid-19, had broken a mandatory quarantine and been to multiple restaurants and other public places, and thus infecting many others in the process. Yet, since the coronavirus knows neither skin color nor national boundaries, it is surprising and particularly troubling that the crackdowns on these mischief-makers would be extended only to African nationals in the city, regardless of their travel history and risks of exposure. For example, though they were not the only foreign nationals in the group, two of my African colleagues at Peking University received repeated calls from the Guangzhou police. They had participated in a two-day class trip to the city in early December, long before the coronavirus became a health concern even in Wuhan. Yet the calls are believed to be part of ‘contact tracing’.

In a rare move, African ambassadors in Beijing issued a joint complaint to China’s foreign minister, arguing that “the singling out of Africans for compulsory testing and quarantine, in our view, has no scientific or logical basis and amounts to racism towards Africans in China.” Yet, while Chinese state media described the incidents as “small rifts,” the government, in a typical fashion, initially tried to deny the reports, instead characterizing them as “rumors,” “misunderstandings,” and stories fabricated and spread by Western media—an attempt to make the issue a new point of contention with the West (read the US). But for those familiar with Beijing’s responses to crises as sensitive as this one, the move is not surprising. In a usual fashion, the government was first slow to react to the outcry, before moving in full force to dismiss the existence of the crisis while also calling out on ill-intention forces (read Western media and their governments) for trying to drive a ‘wedge’ between Beijing and its African counterparts. To anxious African governments, China was keen to reaffirm the principle of equality and equal treatment towards all.

Therefore, instead of promptly acknowledging the wrongdoing and working to solve the problem and alleviate the pain inflicted to African nationals in the city, there is a widespread feeling that the Chinese authorities have focused more on downplaying the issue or completely denying its occurrence. The official, polished diplomatic language will have us believe, for example, that China has zero-tolerance for racism and skin-color-based discrimination. Yet, everyday reality tells a different story. Racism against black people or Africans in China has become so commonplace as to be banal. In fact, China may applaud itself for establishing a friendly relationship with many African governments, but systematic discriminations and repeated ill-treatment of African nationals in China are also well-documented. Thus, there is a clear contradiction between the lived and the experienced reality for Africans living in China and the way their governments and Chinese leaders interact. Given the current context with the coronavirus pandemic, some have explained the quickness with which many African governments has accepted Beijing’s reassurances, given China’s overall importance to Africa’s fight against the pandemic. But the fact of the matter remains that African government officials have never been comfortable and willing to officially address these issues, as they are perceived as rather too embarrassing for what is believed to a brotherly/sisterly relationship between China and Africa.

In Guangzhou specifically, recent incidents are just a manifestation or a symptom of a deeply rooted issue vis-à-vis ‘blackness’ in China that existed long before COVID-19 and will likely survive the pandemic, despite the recently announced measures to combat discrimination in Guangdong province. And though some seem to celebrate “the rising African agency… that is spilling over in the [Sino-African] relationship,” one genuinely wonders how long that will last. For one, Beijing is happiest, as always, to have the incidents quickly forgotten (at least by African leaders) while African governments are also concerned with mobilizing more support and resources in their efforts to address the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic in the continent, including appeals for medical aid and debt relief. Unsurprisingly, there is an apparent calm on the surface despite the boiling currents deep below in the China-Africa relationship.

In early March, I wrote a piece on how the coronavirus has ignited deep-rooted stereotypes about Chinese and how it was wrong to associate it with particular geography or race because it knows not such social constructs. And I am now reiterating the same call with equal vigor. The best way, indeed, the only way to effectively defeat the ongoing pandemic is by working together, collaboratively. So, beyond the staged official PR visits with TV and camera crews, it is encouraging and commendable to see many people, including Chinese nationals, join hands to bring comforts to the affected individuals throughout the city.

For both Chinese and African government officials, however, these crises should serve as an opportunity for a fact-check, especially with regard to the much-touted people-to-people exchange in China-Africa relations. And neither Beijing’s denials nor African governments’ disquieting silence is helpful for that purpose. 

Addressing the Security Implications of COVID-19 in the Sahel region

It was an honor to be invited for the African Security Talk by Conflict Free Nation team to talk about the security implications of the coronavirus pandemic in the Sahel Region. 

Indeed, as the crisis continues to wreak havoc, much of attention has been on its health and economic consequences. Yet, although these are certainly pressing issues, it should be lost to us that the pandemic is already having major impacts on the 'older' issues and might contribute to worsening them in the foreseeable future, especially if we solely focus on just addressing the new challenges brought about by COVID-19. 

 Find out more about what that means for the ongoing security challenges in the Sahel Region.

How Turkey’s Hegemonic Bet on Neo-Ottomanism with Pan-Islamist Face is Costing it Friends and Allies

Finding itself at a crossroads, increasingly isolated by its Western allies, and no longer the dominant Muslim voice it once was, Turkey is now flexing its pan-Islamist muscles.

At a pan-Islamism and anti-Islamophobia-themed meeting, recently held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at the initiative of Turkey, Malaysia, Iran, and Qatar, Turkey’s President Erdoğan seized the occasion to broadcast what has become a driving principle (in spirit, at least) of his foreign policy projections: saving the Arabo-Muslim world from the incessant, perennial onslaught of an essentially anti-Muslim global order.

In the Malaysian capital, Erdoğan spoke about resistance and the need for a robust Muslim fraternity so that the the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, surely under Turkey’s guidance, can rise to the security and socio-economic challenges of globalization and modernity.

Saving brothers in need, but also driving friends and allies away

Erdoğan’s message was clear: now is the time to revive pan-Islamism. This was later echoed by all participants of the small circle of countries who effectively styled themselves as the saviors, or the forerunners of a much-needed “Muslim coalition” to liberate the Muslim world.

There is nothing new to such pan-Islamism-flavored rhetoric in Erdoğan’s political communication toolkit. The Turkish leader has to some degree already effectively styled himself over the years as the “daring one” who stands up to the West. But the Kuala Lumpur gathering came with a more consequential twist as the MENA seeks a new economic system to extricate itself from the grasp of the all-mighty American dollar.

All this was merely a glimpse of Turkey’s regional ambitions. Just days after the Malaysia meeting, Erdoğan announced Ankara’s plans to send troops to Libya to support the beleaguered Tripoli-based and internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in its struggle against the troops of General Khalifa Haftar. 

The Turkish president said he was responding to an invitation from Tripoli as France, Italy, Egypt, the UAE, Jordan, and Russia-backed Haftar prepared to launch a “final assault” on the capital Tripoli. Ankara, once again the savior and the righteous voice in a volatile region, was only legitimately flying to the rescue of the rightful government of Libya. The announcement was green-lighted by the Turkish parliament on January 2.

To critics and regional foes, the move was a dangerous threat to regional stability. But Erdoğan swiftly fired back, arguing that “They are helping a warlord. We are responding to an invitation from the legitimate government of Libya.”

These two episodes—the Kuala Lumpur meeting and the decision on Libya—are inextricably linked; they share the same ethical and ideological underpinnings. What they convey is the pointed nostalgia of a country determined to claim the prestige and diplomatic (or geostrategic) prominence and reverence it thinks it deserves.

Yet these same moves have been driving Turkey’s erstwhile neighboring friends and allies, including NATO, while effectively confining the carefully crafted concepts and ideals of “strategic depth,” “zero problems with neighbors,” “a center country,” and “order setter,” which were supposed to guide its foreign policy, to the long-forgotten pages of history. 

Read the full the version of this article, by Tamba François Koundouno, on Morocco World News.