In today’s China-Africa Daily Brief email newsletter we showcased an article by the analyst and former Liberian Public Works Minister, Gyude Moore, arguing that the pandemic-induced economic crisis will lock in Chinese influence in Africa for at least a decade.
He argues that the legacy of large-scale lending to Africa will give China leverage at a moment when both the United States and Europe can’t muster the vision to engage with the continent. The pandemic’s quadruple impacts of a commodity crash, capital flight, a remittance freeze and a collapse in tourism all lessen African governments’ options, which will make them more dependent on the one partner who actually shows up: China.
I share Moore’s concern that African countries run the risk of being “exposed to Chinese retaliation for inevitable outcomes of our democratic processes that do not align with Beijing’s worldview.”
The question then becomes how to hedge against this outcome. As Moore points out, Western powers’ shrinking influence doesn’t only come from their blinkered view of the continent, but also because they’re embarking on their own ‘decoupling’ from China. To my mind, it’s still an open question whether such a maneuver is even possible, or if it’s a reflection of Brexit-style magical thinking and nostalgia for past imperial power. But either way, it’s sure to be both distracting and expensive, which will further dim Western bandwidth on Africa.
As the world divides, Beijing will turn to the region in which its power and influence are growing and where it faces no peer competitor – Africa.
w. gyude moore, senior policy fellow at the center for global development
It strikes me that one way forward is for Africa to lean into its growing Asian connection. China’s influence in Africa will only grow. But one of the consequences of the Belt and Road is that it strengthens logistical connections between Africa and many Asian capitals, not only Beijing. It might be smart for Africa to aggressively strengthen its trade and investment relationships with all the other Asian powers, from the Gulf States to India to ASEAN to South Korea and Japan.
They all have their own tricky relationships with China, but unlike Western countries, these don’t take the form of a conflict with the very idea of Chinese global power. Rather, they find pragmatic ways of milking their economic relationships with China for all they’re worth while managing Chinese influence. It’s not only that Africa can learn from this form of dynamic adjustment (messy and imperfect as it sometimes is,) but that these intra-Asian relations are themselves becoming major drivers of global business and politics. Having strong ties on both sides of the Japan-China or India-China or Vietnam-China ravines will only strengthen Africa as a whole.
But this will only make sense if Africa also becomes a lot more hard-nosed about looking out for itself. That 54-vote block in the UN has to be good for something. The current debt crisis shows that Africa has no friends. It has to seize every single weapon to fight for its future. Its relationship with China is one such weapon, but it shouldn’t be the only one.
