By Hellen Adogo and Mikatekiso Kubayi
In January, China’s new foreign minister, Qin Gang, embarked on a five-nation African tour, visiting Ethiopia, Gabon, Benin, Angola, and Egypt. This visit typically sets the tone for China-Africa relations for the year.
Chinese foreign ministers have a tradition of visiting Africa at the start of each new year. This tradition is deeply embedded in China’s foreign policy towards Africa, demonstrating the continent’s strategic importance to Beijing. Qin’s visit to the African Union’s (AU) headquarters in Ethiopia was very significant. This year the AU and its member states will celebrate the 60th anniversary commemorating the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, which, according to Chinese Minister Qin, marks a new historical beginning for Africa-China relations. The changing dynamics in global politics calls for a review of Africa-China relations to respond to contemporary challenges facing Africa in the protection of its interests.
China conducts a regular review of its development strategies, analysing the current global terrain as well as its domestic situation to further its modernisation and development goals.
This process has led to massive investment, in both social and economic infrastructures, over the last few decades. This has been made possible due to strong political will and significant sacrifice from its ruling elites over a ‘forty-year’ period. Scholars and policymakers in the country are consistently mapping development indicators for specific conditions to predict as well as guide development efforts with precision.
African agency, the AU, has also shown commitments to regional developmental initiatives. As the AU celebrates the 10-year anniversary of “Agenda 2063: the Africa we want”, it emphasises the significant ambition and task of achieving an African renaissance through 15 flagship projects that aimed to reposition Africa for greatness.
One of the flagship projects, namely, the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is hailed as a breakthrough as it represents the single largest any free trade area in the world. With a projected trade of about US $6.7 trillion in value by 2035 and a population growth that will see it reach about 2.5 billion citizens by 2050, Africa represents a significant market, within the international economic order.
Thus, China-Africa trade relations has become a huge prospect, while Beijing represents a worthy development partner. But this partnership requires transcendence, from the romantic to the physical, application of development effort, perhaps starting with concrete exchanges of development models and actionable projects.
Africa has been battling underdevelopment for hundreds of years. A 40-year wait for development seems very long; however, everything has a starting point. While much has been achieved, it remains one of the most underdeveloped regions of the world with a need of more than $100 billion per annum in investment just to close the infrastructure gap before considering additional investment required as a major contributor to global prosperity and advancement.
Investment in the localisation of production and the construction of regional value chains to withstand global supply shocks such as experienced with the Covid-19 pandemic as well as joint research and development are key components for engagement in this improving relationship.
The four-point proposal
The new Chinese foreign minister made a four-point proposal for Africa-China relations. These included intensifying physical exchanges and sharing of visions; deepening relations between China and the AU; upgrading Africa-China relations; and safeguarding solidarity and cooperation among developing countries.
The significance of the AU in driving Africa-China engagement emerged as the most significant of the four points. China stated their willingness to forge strong synergies between development strategies with African countries and the African Union Commission (AUC) in order to help advance African integration. The opening of the Chinese-built headquarters of the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) was significant boost for Africa’s public health system and capacity.
This symbolic gesture is reminiscent of China’s efforts with the AU headquarters, which it funded and built ten years ago. It once again demonstrates China’s commitment to assisting Africa's development by providing critical infrastructures that the continent desperately requires to effectively address its development challenges.
Furthermore, China has pledged to support the African Union’s G20 membership and believes that the African Union and African countries should play a larger role in the global governance system. This role includes a more decisive voice in the governance of the global economy and the global financial architectures and its involvement in a more democratised international system.
While Africa did not sit at the table that designed the global governance system, it now has the opportunity to develop and shape its future through the functioning and reshaping of such a system in order to better represent all, particularly those on the “margins.” A significant African agency is required for this and can be a further development of Africa’s growing assertiveness and front-foot posture in its articulation of ‘the Africa we want’.
Way forward
As the relationship enters a new era of establishing a high-level Africa-China community with a shared future, the African Union must step up and deliver on the Agenda 2063 goals.
Many Afro-Sino stakeholders have emphasised the importance of developing an Africa strategy for its relations with the rest of the world, particularly with world powers. The Africa Union reforms discussed in the Rwandan President Paul Kagame report include specific proposals to rationalise the AU’s partnerships.
To begin, the AU’s role must be clearly defined and assigned specific goals. At the moment, the relationship is more focused on bilateral interactions between China and individual African countries. It is critical to incorporate Agenda 2063 into national plans and strategies in order to achieve inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development.
Minister Qin mentioned this in the four-point proposal, indicating that China is interested in dealing with a unified Africa and a common regional policy. It is therefore incumbent upon the African Union to take the lead in fine-tuning China-Africa partnership to ensure that it is truly mutually beneficial. Africa can also use its voice and resources as the world’s largest arable land for global food security. It could also utilise its abundance of minerals resources (including rare earths) for future technology to drive investment and access development finance.
* Hellen Adogo is a Researcher at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) at the University of Johannesburg and Mikatekiso Kubayi is Researcher at the Institute for Global Dialogue associated with Unisa, a Research Fellow at IPATC and is also a doctoral candidate at UJ.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Independent Media or IOL.