How China's African ties is unsettling the West

China’s President Xi Jinping was back in Africa, the focus being the Brics Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. Although it was not his first visit, it was the first to Senegal, Rwanda, and Mauritius. There are strong cultural attachments that would attract China to Mauritius due to its sizeable Chinese-descended population. The attraction to Senegal, Rwanda, South Africa and other African states, however, is purely a matter of resources and global power politics.

China is reinforcing its emerging presence as the centre of world development. This is linked to two of Xi’s global projects that many African countries enjoy tapping into; the global vision of shared common destiny and the novelty of the conceptual power and global reach of the One Belt and One Road Initiative to unite various countries through infrastructure. They manifest themselves in several ways. First, within a generation, China deliberately turned itself into a world factory for virtually anything that the over seven billion people on earth need.

As a result, it is the top trading partner of most of the countries. It has become more Adam Smith, with Chinese characteristics, than the British and the Americans. It transformed itself from a low-income country to the second largest economy with high prospects of becoming number one within a decade. 

African countries

Second, China spearheads global infrastructural changes with bullet trains and new glamour mega cities. Its readiness to share that travel transformation attracts Asia, Europe, the Americas, and African countries. While they all go to China, a peculiar debate has arisen as to who should deal with China through proxies or directly.

Subsequently, there is a feud between European powers and Africans as to whether African states should go through former colonial powers in dealing with China. This European colonial hangover treats African states as perpetual children who need their clearance to interact with China. Kenya does not need European permission to engage any country on matters of infrastructural transformation.

It therefore hopes to extend the SGR to Lake Victoria and beyond and possibly link up the SGR from Nairobi to the Lapsset Corridor from Lamu at Isiolo. This portends a regional economic and security boost to transform eastern and central Africa. It is a giant Big Four booster, not to be derailed by negative narratives.

The failure of the negative China narrative in Africa, however, has become a geopolitical stimulant for other powers to recalibrate their relations with Africa. In 1938, Jomo Kenyatta declared: “Professional friends of Africa always want to speak for Africans by keeping Africans ignorant.” They have not changed much. They, however, are trying and want to appear to deliver on the tangibles that Africans want.

Chinese investments

Americans and the Japanese are, as a result, active in building highways, bridges and connecting roads. The European Union would like to be seen to plug into the Big Four, only that members are not exactly sure how to do it. Even South Korea, ranked as the 11th global economic power, wants a piece of the Big Four action and its prime minister, Lee Nak-Yeon, was in Nairobi to express its interest.

On his way to Johannesburg for the Brics Summit, Xi wanted Rwanda President Paul Kagame’s take, as AU chairman, on what the continental concerns were. On his part, Kagame wanted to know how China managed to lift its population from poverty.

Chinese investments in Rwanda include roads, rural electrification using solar power, hospital upgrading and expansion and agricultural training activities for Rwandese. Still, Rwanda has to make up its mind whether it wants a new outlet to the Indian Ocean through Kenya or Tanzania, or both, then get into serious discussions on how China can assist as part of the African component of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Third, as China shows willingness to assist African infrastructural development, it refuses to be drawn into a ‘cold war’ which Donald Trump appears eager to start. In Johannesburg, Xi advocated global interactions, new security thinking, shared values and possible expansion of Brics. China has taken the global centre stage and African states appear to be key.

China’s perceived success has stimulated other extra-continental powers to want to be seen to perform in Africa.

Prof Munene teaches history and international relations at USIU.  [email protected]