It’s unlikely that many people in either Washington or Brussels paid that much attention to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s keynote address on Monday at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation conference. Except for news agencies like Reuters and Bloomberg, no major U.S. newspaper, news site, or television network covered the speech on Tuesday and it went all but unnoticed by most of the China-watching community on Twitter.

That’s too bad because it was an important speech that highlighted some key trends that U.S. and European stakeholders would be well-advised to consider as they attempt to rival China’s expansive presence in regions like Africa and the Global South more broadly.