China is steadily expanding its security presence in Africa through deeper military ties, weapons sales, and multinational deployments as UN Peacekeepers. In fact, China is now the largest arms supplier to Sub-Saharan Africa, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
There are also mounting concerns over the protection of Chinese personnel on the continent who have been regular targets of kidnapping and ransom by bandits in the DRC, Nigeria, and South Africa, among other countries.
Lungani Hlongwa, editor of the China-Africa Security Radar on Substack, joins Eric & Cobus to discuss why African militaries are increasingly turning to China and away from traditional partners in the U.S. and Europe.
Show Notes:
- Subscribe to The China-Africa Security Radar: https://cafradar.substack.com/
- Politico: Pentagon plan prioritizes homeland over China threat by Paul McLeary and Daniel Lippman
- The China-Global South Project: Q&A: China’s ‘Feeling the Stones’ Approach to African Security
About Lungani Hlongwa:
Lungani Hlongwa is the Editor of China-Africa Security Radar (CASR), a newsletter dedicated to analyzing China’s expanding security footprint in Africa. He is also a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, where his research examines the adoption of Safe City projects in Africa within the frameworks of the Global Security Initiative and the Digital Silk Road.
Transcript:
ERIC OLANDER: I’m Eric Olander. And as always, I’m joined by CGSP’s Managing Editor, Cobus van Staden, from lovely Cape Town, South Africa. A very good afternoon to you, Cobus.
Good afternoon. So Cobus, we’re going to turn our focus today on China-Africa security issues and the timing for this conversation is really ideal given the fact that last week, a bombshell report dropped from Politico that indicated that the United States is going to engage in a, what potentially could be a radical shift in its defense strategy. If according to Politico, the new national defense strategy that is sitting on Secretary of War, used to be the Secretary of Defense, but he’s now the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth’s desk.
And this new strategy calls for the reprioritization of U.S. defense issues. So instead of trying to counter China and Russia everywhere around the world, which has really been the priority going back all the way to the Obama administration, remember we had the pivot to Asia and that was to shift resources out here in the Western Pacific. Now the focus is going to be on the homeland, which of course makes sense given the fact that the United States military now has troops on the streets of Washington.
They’re threatening to put soldiers on the streets of Chicago. They were on Los Angeles streets. And if you believe Donald Trump, which I recommend everybody do because he tends to follow through with a lot of things, he wants to put U.S. soldiers in lots of blue cities across the United States. Also, according to the national defense strategy, they want to focus on the Western hemisphere. And we’ve already seen what that looks like just in the past couple of days with the attack on a suspected or alleged drug boat that killed 11 people coming from Venezuela. So Cobus, the relationship between this and the China-Africa angle is that this could potentially be very bad news for AFRICOM, who for much of the past, say, 10 years going back to the first Trump administration, has justified a part of its existence.
Remember, Donald Trump wanted to kill AFRICOM. He wanted to take it out. But they came back, General Townsend back in those days, came back to Capitol Hill and said, we can’t kill AFRICOM.
Why? Because of China. Now, if this new national defense strategy goes through, that argument may be taken off the table by the Pentagon itself.
And AFRICOM could be facing a crisis for its own existence. What do you think?
COBUS VAN STADEN: Well, I wanted to actually ask you, the shift we’re looking at shift in the geographic focus of the US’s presence, right? We’re not looking at a shift necessarily about its wider focus on China. So I just wanted to clarify that.
When he’s talking about focusing on the Western Hemisphere, he will still be focusing on China within the Western Hemisphere, right?
ERIC OLANDER: Yes, he will be focusing on China in the Western Hemisphere, but not exclusively. What the Politico report said was that the focus on China and Russia would be deprioritized, which, by the way, is consistent with what they’ve done in the intelligence realm. They’ve deactivated many of the centers in the national security community and also in the State Department that track Chinese and Russian engagement around the world.
So the Pentagon would be following this. Remember that this document is as much a strategy document as it is an appropriations document, because the next step after this is it gets sent to Congress. Congress then is supposed to fund it according to these priorities.
So the Western Hemisphere would probably be a main focus of countering China there. And this is consistent with what we’ve heard from a number of scholars who say that Donald Trump has this ethos that is really rooted in the late 19th century, early 20th century of spheres of influence. There is this idea that they’re going to relegate Asia to China, Europe to Russia, and the United States would then have the Western Hemisphere sphere of influence.
I don’t know how that works in the 21st century, but that is at least part of the thinking. A couple other points on the China-Africa security part is we’ve seen again some of the challenges that China faces in Africa just in the past couple of weeks. There was a brutal attack on a Chinese convoy in Nigeria’s Ido State last week, where one Chinese national was taken captive and five others were involved in the attack.
Eight Nigerian security forces were killed. We don’t know who the bandits are, but Cobus, this really touches on an issue that has been persistent for at least 15 years that you and I have been doing it, where Chinese nationals, workers, mine operators, oil workers, have been the targets of kidnappings and also violent attacks. And so I think protecting Chinese nationals has been a major issue, but it doesn’t look like China, the government or the military, the PLA, despite what we see in the movies, is doing anything to change its force posture.
COBUS VAN STADEN: Well, there’s a set of rules that will probably have to be shifted or reinterpreted in order to make that easier, one being the general rule against getting involved in foreign countries, as well as other rules about which Chinese nationals are allowed to carry weapons in foreign countries as well. But that would be a significant step towards more on-the-ground engagement, I think.
ERIC OLANDER: One other quick headline before we get to our discussion. News came out of Pretoria this week as well, that the South African Defense Force would like to postpone joint exercises with Russia and China that were supposed to take place off of the northeastern Chinese coast. Later this fall, they coincide with the G20 summit and the South African military said, listen, we need to have as many resources available to protect the summit.
They will reschedule it. My first thought, Cobus, was, well, it’s just not a politically opportune time for South Africa to have a joint military exercise with Russia and China. That may be part of it.
But then again, the rationale of deploying resources at home to protect the summit makes a lot of sense as well. What’s your take on that before we get started?
COBUS VAN STADEN: Well, I think a lot of this calculus was political because it’s not only that it would have happened in the same year, it would have literally overlapped with the summit. So that would have been, I mean, that would have been the worst possible political step for South Africa. But then, of course, South Africa has made many.
But I think in addition to just the resource issue, which is real because the South African military is very overstretched. But it’s also, you know, I think just in terms of trying to not exacerbate the ongoing fight with the U.S., I think they made that decision as well.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, that’s a calculation that it looks like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also made this week when he did not attend the BRICS summit, in part because this was a virtual summit that they got together this week to talk about the tariffs and Donald Trump and how angry they are at U.S. foreign policy. And Narendra Modi sent his external affairs minister, S.J. Shankar, to participate instead. And we spoke on our Global South podcast with a leading Indian foreign policy expert, Constantino Xavier, who said, listen, the timing just was not good as he’s trying to repair relations with the U.S. So it does look like optics may play into this a little bit. And that’s important in politics. Well, let’s focus now on some of the broader issues in the China-Africa military and security relationship. I want to draw everybody’s attention to a relatively new substack that’s out called China-Africa Security Radar.
And in all the years, Cobus, that you and I have been on this beat going back now to 2010, I can really tell you that this is by far the best newsletter that I’ve seen that’s out there on China-Africa issues. It is absolutely fantastic. And if you want to follow some of these themes that I’ve just discussed in the first five minutes of our show today, this substack does an amazing job.
It’s put together by a brand newly minted Ph.D. Congratulations to Lungani Hlongwa, who is joining us today from Taiwan, but he is normally from South Africa. And Lungani, thank you so much for taking the time. And congratulations both on your Ph.D. and on the incredible substack that you’ve got going. Thank you so much. Well, let’s talk a little bit about some of the key themes that you address in your coverage. You’re putting out this newsletter and doing these kind of analyses.
You talk about everything from military modernization to the global security initiative to this issue of protecting Chinese nationals. When we look at China-Africa security relations in 2025, it’s not a topic that has gotten a lot of attention in light of everything else that’s going on in the world, but it’s something that you’re focusing on quite a bit. How would you describe the current state of the China-Africa security relationship?
LUNGANI HLONGWA: So I think the China-Africa security engagement currently is quite fast and multifaceted. If you look across the African landscape, there’s quite a lot of activities going on, not only in terms of military donations, but also military exercises as well that have increasingly become more complex over the years. If you look back maybe to around the early 2000s, military exercises between the PLA and Africa were relatively simple.
They focused on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. But recently, the military exercises conducted between the PLA and African countries are a bit more complex. If you look, for example, at the exercises conducted this year alone, the Eagles of Civilizations between the PLA and Egypt, that was a very complex and comprehensive military exercise.
So I think that just shows the development of this relationship. So it’s quite multifaceted. Just like I mentioned, it involves military donations.
China has donated a lot of military equipment and also granted funding to a lot of militaries in Africa. And also, if you look at security broadly defined, China is also building what they call safe cities in a lot of African countries, which are basically urban environments that are outfitted with urban security infrastructure, which basically helps with enhancing urban security. So I would describe the relationship as multifaceted, and I think it’s increasingly going to become more dominant in terms of the China-Africa relationship.
COBUS VAN STADEN: So just starting on the weapons donations you mentioned, we’re also seeing a lot of weapons sales over the last year or so. I’ve seen increasing announcements like in Mali, in Congo-Brazzaville, in several places, and buying new Chinese military equipment. So we’ve also seen the announcement that Norinco, the Chinese weapons maker, is setting up more of a presence in Africa.
So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. Like, how roughly does it break down between donations and purchases, and do you see new kinds of equipment starting to crop up?
LUNGANI HLONGWA: Yeah. So I think when you look at that specific example you made of Norinco setting up bases and also regional sales offices, just in 2023, I think, Norinco set up a regional sales office in Senegal. Not only that, but also some of these companies are helping African countries develop their own defense industries as well.
So I think this is a relationship that is going to advance Africa’s military industrialization, but also at the same time, I think it could also, you know, potentially bring in new tensions, geopolitical tensions between Africa and maybe other traditional partners, Western partners particularly. But I think overall, we are seeing greater development in this relationship. More Chinese companies are approaching African countries to strike deals with them, and also African countries themselves routinely approach the Chinese.
So it’s not only a one-way relationship. These African countries themselves sometimes would approach China to facilitate maybe training for peacekeepers and supply weapons and other military equipment.
ERIC OLANDER: The reputation for Chinese weapons has previously been that they are more affordable, but they’re not as high a quality as what you’d get from Europe or the United States. I’m not sure if that’s true all the way today, but we just got word this week that in Saudi Arabia, for example, they were testing a drone interceptor that was made by the Chinese and it didn’t perform well under real world conditions. We’ve also heard from Nigerian military sources who’ve said that they’ve been sometimes a little frustrated with how quickly some of the Chinese equipment does break down.
What’s your understanding in terms of the quality of Chinese weapons and how they are faring in African theaters?
LUNGANI HLONGWA: Yeah, I would say the reactions are quite mixed. There are those who have voiced concerns about quality and reliability issues, but then you also have countries that continue to pack Chinese weapons and Chinese military equipment. If you look at Norinco, for example, it has supplied armored vehicles to so many countries.
And I don’t think that all these countries would be buying these equipment if it was not reliable, or at least meet their military standards. So I do think that the reactions can be quite mixed, but I think China has also done a lot to improve its quality. Otherwise, you know, its reputation is on the line and Africa just happens to be the place where a lot of these equipment is actually tested because China has been in a state of, I think the Chinese call it the peace disease, you know, they haven’t really been in any major conflict in a very long time.
And so this means that a lot of its PLA troops are, you know, they lack combat experience. And then also their military equipment is not battle tested. So I think the reaction is mixed, like I said.
So there are some countries that are still, you know, unsure, but I think most countries, the fact that they’re still buying Chinese equipment, it speaks about the improvement in quality.
COBUS VAN STADEN: I mean, just to check, have the US’s posture on who they’ll sell weapons to in Africa, has that changed at all as part of the general changes during the Trump administration, or is that still, is the kind of barriers that made it harder for African governments to buy US weapons and that ended up kind of making them go to China frequently, are those largely still in place?
LUNGANI HLONGWA: Yes, I think a lot of those barriers are definitely still there. And that’s part of the reason, as you mentioned, why so many countries are turning to China and some of those barriers would include, for example, requirements for human rights protection. A lot of Western companies are concerned about how those weapons are going to be used.
And the general understanding is that Chinese suppliers are not as concerned about political conditions. And this, of course, is part of its non-intervention approach. But I do think that a lot of those barriers that you mentioned, you know, that prevent African countries from acquiring weapons from the West, particularly the US and maybe a few other countries, those barriers are certainly still there.
I guess maybe in the future, they might have to relook at how they strike deals and what barriers they put in place, because currently that gap, I think, is expanding.
ERIC OLANDER: One area where we’re seeing a lot of growth in Chinese military procurement in Africa is in the drone space. Drones have been instrumental in the eastern Congo, Chinese drones in particular, the Wing Lungs in eastern Congo. The UAE also lent Chinese Wing Lung drones to Ethiopia during the Tigray conflict.
They were in Libya. Chinese drones, both for reconnaissance and attack drones, are increasingly on the shopping list of African countries. Talk to us a little bit about how these kinds of new technologies that were once maybe, you know, unaffordable for a lot of countries, the Chinese have made accessible and how they might be changing some of the battlefield landscapes in Africa.
LUNGANI HLONGWA: Yeah, that’s a very good question. And it’s one that I was that I’m also closely monitoring, particularly when you look at the emergence of artificial intelligence as well, where you have drones that that do reconnaissance on their own autonomously. And recently, there have been a number of studies or articles that explore how these technologies are changing the African battlefield and the African security landscape.
And I think it’s still a bit too early to say currently, but I do foresee these technologies drastically changing the African security landscape. And I think a lot of African countries see this as an opportunity to leapfrog some of these developments to to to rapidly acquire these weapons instead of developing them on their own. So I think if we if we look ahead, we’re going to see more of these advanced weapons making their way into Africa, which is definitely something that will require more governance intervention in terms of regulation and making sure that weapons that come into African countries, not only from China, but also from other countries, do not end up in the wrong hands.
COBUS VAN STADEN: So Eric mentioned new security posture, a possible new security posture on the side of the US. You’ve also written about the framing by AFRICOM commanders as them having to to kind of oppose China in Africa. So I was wondering what your take is on these shifts and how you think it will affect US security presence there.
LUNGANI HLONGWA: Yeah, so I do think that the the growing China Africa security relationship is having a huge impact on geopolitical alliances. So if you look at South Africa, for example, there was a military exercise that was supposed to take place between the South African and the US and that was cancelled, I think partly because of the tension between the two countries. So I do think that growing China Africa security relations are also going to significantly alter or shape the emerging geopolitical landscape.
But I also think that. The ability of African countries to choose China as a security partner reflects African agency in a way, you know, the ability to diversify the security partnerships, to look beyond Western solutions and. In the future, I guess we can expect more African countries to be empowered in terms of their security partners, and I think what we are seeing currently is definitely an exercise of African agency in a way.
ERIC OLANDER: But give us some context here, because when we talk about US, European and Chinese military engagement and partnership in Africa, they’re very different in what they do and the ways those relationships and our friend Judd Evermont, who was an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Security in Washington a couple of years ago, did a comparison between the two. And he showed that the depth of the Pentagon’s relationships with African militaries is quite impressive and runs and then a lot of training programs and on the ground experiences they bring people over to North Carolina and they bring and they do their own. You know, Africom is very engaged.
So help us understand the context of what the Chinese are doing relative to say what other foreign partners like the Americans are doing.
LUNGANI HLONGWA: I think what the Chinese are doing is more comprehensive. If you look at a lot of the security and military deals that are being made, they’re being framed within broader narratives of South-South cooperation, supporting African solutions to African problems. And I think also China appeals to African, you know, anti-colonial sensibilities.
These are all, I think, aspects that the West does not share with Africa. So China really capitalizes on that. And I think it’s working in Africa also, you know, shares the same views.
You know, they support China’s, they see China as a member of the global South. So I think, I think when we zoom like more specifically to the military exercises, we have to consider that it’s not just that it’s much bigger than that, you know, China is also a major trading partner with a lot of African countries. And so all these relations, they kind of come together in a way that you don’t see with the West, you know, particularly now in the present geopolitical environment where the US has come out and said that African countries will not have to try to stand up on their own in terms of the security.
We are seeing this withdrawal somehow, even funding for the United Nations is on the line, you know, like not a lot of people understand what’s at stake. And it’s not very clear what’s going to happen. Is the funding going to be reduced from the US side?
Because the US is currently the biggest contributor to UN peacekeeping operations with China being a close second. So there’s a lot of uncertainty there. But I do think that in terms of the differences with China, we have to look at the bigger picture, whereas with the US, they don’t share a lot of what China and Africa already share.
COBUS VAN STADEN: As Eric also mentioned, the security issues affecting Chinese nationals in African countries have increased. And in the case of other foreign partnerships, like in Pakistan, for example, we’re also seeing that China is increasingly hitting that button. They’re increasingly kind of insisting on more comprehensive security cooperation.
But we’re not 100% sure what that would actually look like on the ground. And you’ve also covered in your work some calls within the Chinese conversation about an enhanced kind of security role for China, particularly to look at Chinese nationals and Chinese assets. So I was wondering where you see that conversation at the moment, like, you know, kind of like how Chinese stakeholders are reacting to these security challenges and what they’re suggesting.
LUNGANI HLONGWA: Yeah, I think it’s going to be very interesting how China deals with the security of its citizens abroad, you know, whether they be miners, workers or business people, because I think the way that China is going to deal with that situation is probably going to require some fundamental changes to its approach, which is non-intervention. So in the past, I think a lot of private security companies have been deployed to help out to handle that situation. China has also sought more local security assistance to help out with that situation.
I think partly what Eric referred to earlier on with the Nigeria case recently where local security personnel who were transporting and these Chinese workers were targeted. So I think China is trying to diversify its approach in terms of protecting its citizens abroad. Like I said in the past, it has looked into using private security companies, but also there’s a lot of issues around that as well.
And then also with relying on local security forces, there are also challenges there because a lot of African countries don’t have the capacity. They’re already overstretched. A lot of them are already facing incessant conflicts, you know, multiple locations.
So I think the way that China is going to deal with this issue is going to require some changes to its approach in Africa.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, what we know for sure, and this is, again, based on what we’ve been watching in Pakistan, which is far more violent than what we’ve seen in Africa, where there are separatist militants who have waged just an incessant campaign against the Chinese, targeting soft targets and hard targets, targeting teachers and workers and whatnot. The demands are for the Pakistani government to do more to step up to protect Chinese people. What you’re not going to see is the PLA protecting them.
You’re not going to see a deployment of a PLA Marine Brigade to go out to Nigeria. That, again, as you pointed out, Lungani, is a violation of the non-interference doctrine. You’re probably also not going to see armed Chinese private contractors like Blackwater, the Chinese equivalent of Blackwater.
Again, just think of the optics of the headlines if an armed Chinese contractor killed two Nigerians in that attack. I mean, it would just be, you know, the narratives are, you know, are unending as to what would happen. And so I think the pressure is going to be on hiring local contractors.
What they might do, though, is bring in security contractors, say, from South Africa. You know, the South Africans are very well known for being very sophisticated in their private security business, and they have a lot of experience in these types of markets. So they might bring in other African private security contractors to defend their people in their places.
But we will not see the Chinese there in terms of arming themselves and fighting back. There’s just no precedent for it. And again, look to Pakistan in terms of the modes and the modalities of what they’re doing.
And it is a tough thing. It is very tough for them. Let’s quickly shift to the politics and the geopolitics.
You’ve been writing a lot about the global security initiative. We just heard Chinese President Xi Jinping talk about the global governance initiative. So this Chinese international governance architecture is starting to take shape a little bit more.
You know, a lot of us are struggling to understand what these things actually are beyond just the rhetoric. What’s the substance? What’s the benefit for an African country to say, hey, I want to be part of the global security initiative?
Is there anything in it other than winning a chit from the Chinese who they’ve signed on to saying we’re attending a forum on the GSI or we are participating in a letter, a joint statement? What are the substantive benefits for any African country to endorse the GSI? And I’m not suggesting that in a negative way.
I’m just trying to understand what are the practical benefits for doing that. What appeals to them about the GSI that they may not be seeing from the rest of the international order?
LUNGANI HLONGWA: Yeah, it’s a very interesting question, one that I’ve also been asking myself. And I think one of the major benefits of African countries to partaking in the global security initiative is it ensures sustained and continuous support, military support. That’s probably the primary benefits.
But I think it also ties into what I mentioned earlier, the global geopolitical dynamics. It’s also showing a shift towards supporting more South-South initiatives, which is basically what the global security initiative is all about. It’s not only about the global South, though.
It’s also it’s more comprehensive. You know, China doesn’t really frame it as an initiative for the global South. The global security initiative is framed as an initiative to counter the global peace deficit that we are seeing currently with conflicts and wars.
And it’s framed as a Chinese solution to some of these issues. So I think the primary benefit is just sustained support from the Chinese, whether that is the ability to develop strong military ties and maybe military funding as well. And China also benefits a lot.
I mean, African countries also benefit significantly by sending some of their military officers to China for training, whether that is like technical training or operational training as well. So, yeah, I think that’s probably the major benefit.
ERIC OLANDER: Cobus, let me put that question to you as well, especially as we’re hearing more about these governance initiatives. When you hear about the GSI, I think a lot of people are legitimately trying to understand what is it and beyond just even the GSI, the GDI, GCI governance and AI initiatives. How are you interpreting this so people can understand what a policymaker in Nairobi or Pretoria or others are are thinking about whether or not to participate in these things?
A lot of people say that they’re signing up just to kind of go along with it. But there’s no real commitment and there’s no real upside. But why not?
But I’m curious what you think as somebody who’s been thinking about some of these governance questions.
COBUS VAN STADEN: I think a lot of how it’s going to work, we’ll start seeing in more concrete detail, I think, over the over the more recent future, because, you know, the way that I framed the announcement of the or the way that I understood the announcement of the Global Governance Initiative last week was that it formed a kind of a almost a kind of a container in which all of the other initiatives will fit, since they all provide kind of overlapping different forms of governance, governance of development, governance of security, governance of these these different forms of governance. And they all fit into a wider kind of global governance initiative. I found the security one actually the hardest to understand, although the civilization one can also be very well.
ERIC OLANDER: The civilization one, by the way, is focused on human rights. That is a counter to U.S. and European human rights, that’s that’s the primary focus of the kind of ideas of of universal values.
COBUS VAN STADEN: So, you know, like like defining civilizationally specific values rather than universal human rights values. And, you know, so so in terms of in terms of the security cooperation, what is still a missing piece for me is exactly, you know, like beyond kind of like general ideas of cooperative security and, you know, kind of the non-hegemonic security and so on, what that will actually look like. And particularly what that will actually look like in the case of a stronger state versus the weakest state, for example.
What what does the Global Security Initiative have to say about the Ukraine crisis, for example? Right. So there it still remains quite kind of vague for me.
And Lungani, I was wondering what your take is on it. Like, are we seeing the Global Security Initiative becoming more concrete as time goes on?
LUNGANI HLONGWA: Yeah, I think when we look at the Global Security Initiative, we’re going to see something very similar to the Belt and Road Initiative. So basically, we’re going to see a lot of projects that are already taking place being branded as part of the Global Security Initiative. For example, when you look at safe cities in the past, they’ve always been considered as part of the digital Silk Road Initiative.
But recently, China donated some some military or sorry, some surveillance equipment to Sierra Leone. And that was branded as part of the Global Security Initiative. And also this year, the PLA conducted a military exercise of Djibouti and that was also branded as part of the Global Security Initiative.
So I think we’re just going to see a gradual inclusion of various kinds of cooperation between China and Africa being branded as the Global Security Initiative. So I think that’s how it’s going to, you know, take shape. It’s basically going to serve as this umbrella concept for various kinds of China-Africa security cooperation.
ERIC OLANDER: I think that’s a very yeah, I think that’s a good take. I agree with that. Let’s talk about the physical presence of the Chinese military and security presence in Africa.
Obviously, the Chinese are the largest contributor of peacekeeping soldiers to among the P5 members in Africa. That’s something that Xi Jinping has said that he wants to increase in the years ahead. U.N. operations, of course, are in doubt and in question in the future is in question because Donald Trump has made it very clear that he’s not committed to funding the U.N. on an ongoing basis. And should the United States as the largest funder of the United Nations withdraw, that does put the entire institution in question. Others may step up, but they have not stepped up. The Chinese have increased a little bit over the years and it’s been steadily, but it’s not anywhere near to fill the void if the United States decides to withdraw.
There’s also been a lot of Chinese ports of call for the Chinese navy that’s been operating off the coast of Somalia as part of the now 15 or 16 year old multinational anti-piracy operations. We’ve seen Chinese advanced vessels, warships make ports of call in Nigeria, then also in all the way on the Angola, then down in South Africa. And they’ve really kind of circumnavigated the continent.
So that’s been something interesting. And then, of course, there’s been talk for years coming out of really only the Pentagon as far as I can tell. And we’ve had this conversation on the show for a long time.
And I sit here and roll my eyes and all my friends in the U.S. national security establishment say, you don’t know what we know. It’s always been a joke to me that the concerns over Chinese basing in West Africa. And the reason why it’s been a joke to me is because if you look at the Chinese PLA literature, they talk a lot about basing in the Indian Ocean.
They talk a lot about basing in Southeast Asia. They talk even about in Oceania. They never talk about Africa because Africa is not a core security priority for the Chinese military.
The Indian Ocean, the South China Sea and the Western Pacific more broadly are core national security interests and security interests for the Chinese. I’d like to get your take on this discussion that’s been going on for years about a possible Chinese base that could happen in Equatorial Guinea, in Gabon, in I mean Namibia. I mean, pick your country.
They’ve talked about it. What’s your take on this discussion?
LUNGANI HLONGWA: I’ve also been consulting Chinese literature on this issue. And as you mentioned, they do talk about developing maritime strategic strong points. But I’ve also yet to come across a source that specifically talks about developing a base in Africa.
I’ve also not come across any such information. But I do feel that there’s a lot of speculation. There’s a lot of nervousness, particularly from the U.S. side on China potentially building a base there. And as you mentioned, you know, sometimes it’s in West Africa, sometimes it’s in East Africa. And I think a lot of these speculations stem from the current geopolitical tension between the two countries, of course, with Africa in the middle. For China to truly become a maritime nation, which is something that they speak a lot about, they are going to have at some point to expand beyond just that one base in Djibouti.
I don’t know where yet, but I do feel that it’s a necessity for them to be able to protect the maritime trade. If you look historically, sea power theory teaches that, you know, in order for a country to become a sea power or a maritime nation, in addition to being a commercial power, you also need to have bases that support your maritime commerce. I don’t know how China thinks of this issue specifically, but I do think that in the future we might be seeing more bases.
I just don’t know where, I don’t know where the others are getting the information from.
ERIC OLANDER: Just very quickly before we go, tell us a little bit about what you’re trying to do with the substack. What’s your goal? What’s the mission?
You’ve done some great work on it. It’s been up for about a year. And also, I’m very excited to say that you were partially inspired to do it by a workshop that COBIS led.
So that’s very exciting for us that we contributed to that. And we’re very happy that that you’re doing it. But I think for people who are maybe willing to check it out, tell us a little bit about what you’re doing and what you’re trying to achieve.
LUNGANI HLONGWA: Basically, with this substack, I’m trying to, as the name suggests, you know, China Africa security radar. So my goal is just to position myself as, you know, just a regular African, you know, interested in China Africa security relations. So I track a lot of what’s going on on the ground.
For example, if there’s a donation that took place, then I will zoom into that and look at like other themes related to that, you know. So I publish weekly or sometimes biweekly, depending on what’s going on on the ground, because sometimes it’s not much happening, really. So basically, it’s just a substack to document and to track what’s happening on the ground and then just trying to inform people of this developing relationship.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, it is a fantastic substack. We’ll put a link to it in the show notes. I cannot recommend it enough.
And if you sign up for it, you get the email every week or sometimes biweekly and sometimes multi times a week. So Lungani, thank you so much for taking the time today to join us. It’s been a thrill to have the chance to speak with you after enjoying your your writing for so long.
Lungani Sholongwe is the man behind the China Africa security radar. Again, the link will be in the show notes. Lungani, thank you so much for your time.
LUNGANI HLONGWA: Thank you. Thank you, Eric and Cobus.
ERIC OLANDER: Cobus, I thought Lungani’s take on the GSI is really one of the best ones that I’ve heard in a long time, and I think it’s most salient today as these relationships that the United States has had in Africa for decades are now in question. I mean, there’s no doubt that Donald Trump is not a fan of African engagement more broadly. Capitol Hill and on Congress, they like AFRICOM and they were the ones who saved AFRICOM.
But as we’ve seen now in Trump 2.0, Congress doesn’t have the power that it had in the first Trump administration. And Congress has been very, very compliant with pretty much everything that Trump wants to do, at least the Republicans. So this question of the future of AFRICOM, I think, is legitimate.
It may not be imminent, but whether AFRICOM survives the next three years, I think is an open question. And that would no doubt prompt security planners in African capitals to start looking for alternatives. And the GSI and what the Chinese are proposing, and again, the multifaceted nature of Chinese engagement, whether it’s on trade, whether it’s on weapons, whether it’s on training, the junkets that they’re bringing African officers over to China, may seem more appealing in this new environment.
Quite possibly.
COBUS VAN STADEN: I think, you know, also because framed and as part of larger political cooperation with China as well, you know, so if you’re working with them on the GSI, then you’re always also working with them on a bunch of other things. So I think that would be more attractive. Like at the same time, I think China, I think, has a lot more kind of reticence and internal barriers to plunging fully into an African kind of like, you know, all like no holds barred security cooperation.
In that sense, I think China is still somewhat different from Russia, you know, which we just had a much more kind of proactive and in lots of ways, a lot more problematic kind of security presence in Africa. I think China is still governed a lot by domestic rules and domestic kind of preoccupations. And that will, I think, put a kind of a natural limit, I think, to how much, to how much they want to do.
But, you know, I think there’s still a lot that would pass under that limit.
ERIC OLANDER: I want to talk a little bit about the morality of the weapons sales. And let’s be very clear before we get into this conversation that nothing that the Chinese are doing in Africa from the surveillance technology to the drones, to the light arms, to the anti-personnel mines is unique to the Chinese. Africa is a wide marketplace for vendors from all over the world who have been doing it, to be fair.
However, OK, there’s a little bit of a caveat because China now, if I recall, has become the largest arms seller to Africa now. A lot of it is small arms. And again, the United States for a long time had these rules that said, listen, if you’re going to use these weapons against your own people, we’re not going to sell them to you.
We can have a lot of disagreements with the United States and you and I both do. But that seemed like a pretty decent policy to have. The Chinese have an approach which is, well, that’s a you problem, not a me problem.
And so them selling pretty much anything off the shelf is fair game. And selling into countries with very weak governance and long reputations of using weapons against their own people is morally questionable. I mean, under whoever is doing the selling, where do you come down in terms of the increase in Chinese arms sales to to African countries?
And to be fair, not all African countries are using weapons maliciously against their own people. The fight in Nigeria is a legitimate fight against Boko Haram and others. So again, this is a very complex and I don’t want to oversimplify when I say the word Africa.
It’s just a shorthand for what we’re talking about. So it’s a very complex, multifaceted issue. But where do you come down on this issue of, you know what, we don’t interfere.
If you want to use anti-personnel mines in your countryside, go ahead and do it. That’s not our problem. And where do you come down and what the United States was doing?
Clearly, Donald Trump has not made that the same priority, but at least was trying to up until the Trump administration to control some of the weapons that went into the continent.
COBUS VAN STADEN: It’s a really difficult issue because on the one hand, government and weak kind of state army capacity is a significant security problem in, you know, in Africa. It does it does mean that that that insurgent and separatist militias like Boko Haram have a freer hand. And it also means that particularly rural areas become a lot less safe.
At the same time, we’ve seen, you know, in a place like Sudan, obviously in them is the starkest, you know, reminder of of how weaponry can be used against civilian populations and is being used against civilian populations. And the complication there isn’t only China selling directly onto these governments, but also Chinese equipment being sold onto them by third party sellers. You know, we’ve seen, you know, Chinese weapons, Chinese drones, for example, arriving via the UAE, you know, in African African battlegrounds, for example.
So the very kind of like complex and worrying thing for me, like, you know, I kind of see both sides of this, but both sides are not looking good. So that, yeah, it is worrying.
ERIC OLANDER: And again, just as a caveat, this is not uniquely an African issue. It’s the same problem in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world. But we have a situation in some African countries where not only is there weak governance, but there’s very weak military discipline.
And this is something that we’ve seen in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where military soldiers have been contracted by Chinese mining companies to engage in horrific human rights abuses. And we’ve seen videos of those from time to time. And so, again, it just speaks to this question of very powerful weapons that are increasingly affordable, mixed with this combustible brew of weak governance and weak military discipline that unfortunately civilians do end up paying the price.
Just very quickly before we go, anything that changed your mind on the GSI from what you heard from Lungani? Again, I’ve been rather kind of not skeptical, but just wondering what the heck this thing is. And I thought Lungani, like talking about it in the context of, well, look at what the BRI is and the BRI is just as nebulous in many respects.
It has no definition. There is no secretariat. At least the GSI does have a mission statement, if you will.
And I’m just I just I still don’t understand the practical value. But maybe we’re in a stage where it’s optics that matter more. And it’s just I don’t like the other guy.
So I’m going to sign up with this and I don’t know what will happen. And that’s what a lot of countries have done with the BRI, too. Honduras signed up to the BRI, hasn’t really benefited much from it, but it’s there.
I mean, what’s your take on just some final thoughts before we go on the GSI after hearing what Lungani said?
COBUS VAN STADEN: I agree with Lungani that in some ways the GSI functions similar to the BRI in that the BRI is basically like a big story. It’s a narrative, essentially, that then provides a kind of organizing principle and way to understand what is essentially a kind of a herding cats chaos situation of lots of different projects being conducted by lots of different Chinese actors. It provides a kind of a way to see them all together and to make sense of them altogether and to, you know, and to and a way it provides a political language to then harness that, you know, all of that, all of that kind of chaotic outward energy into something that actually benefits China, you know, kind of nebulously defying China.
I think the GSI similarly, you know, is a kind of a kind of a overarching narrative that can that can function as a some kind of organizing principle. I would be very interested to see it in action. If we’re talking about consulting between countries and the honoring of the different countries’ security priorities in a kind of a cooperative space, what does that look like?
Like, you know, kind of like who gives up what, like what kind of compromises are reached, how, you know, like in which cases is the GSI avoiding future conflict? I just don’t know enough about it to be able to say. And I haven’t seen any real, like hardcore kind of like data being put out on that.
So it would be very interesting, very interesting to see it actually working.
ERIC OLANDER: And to be fair, if we were in 1948, 1949, and we were asking the United States saying, OK, what’s this new security framework that you’re talking about for Europe? It may have been just as imperfect then too. And it’s just something that may take years, if not decades, to actually formulate into something substantive.
What I will say about the Chinese, though, is if nothing else, it’s a vision. It’s something that when the ambassador sits down with the foreign or defense minister and says, OK, what do you have on the table, Mr. China? They say, well, we’ve got the GSI, the GCI, the GGI, the Belt and Road, the NDB, the AIIB.
We’ve got all these things which are forward looking. And then they bring the European Union representative, Ursula von der Leyen, to say, OK, what do you have on the table? I don’t know what Europe stands for for today.
Certainly, then the Americans show up and they’ll say, well, it’s about America first, you know, buzz off. It’s a vision thing, right? I mean, if nothing else, it’s a forward looking vision for countries that, as you’ve talked about, have been future starved for a very long time.
And that may be enough because nobody else has a forward looking vision that they’re presenting.
COBUS VAN STADEN: That, I think, and also that the GSI explicitly makes space for different levels of development, different levels of military capacity. You know, so in theory, it would create some kind of space for weak and stronger countries to coordinate. Again, we need to see it work, actually.
We need to see it actually do something. You know, in order to in order to understand what that would look like.
ERIC OLANDER: So just very quickly on this UN thing. So Donald Trump had some comments this week saying that the United Nations has potential, that’s his word, potential. And but it’s not living up to its potential.
And he is laying the groundwork for a potential full withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations in terms of its funding commitments. Already, the United States apparently is very far behind. I talked to a source inside the UN today.
And it says basically the US has financially withdrawn from the UN. So many of the Chinese governance architectures that we’ve been talking about, GDI in particular, but now the GGI are anchored into the UN sustainable development goals and the UN as an institution. So there’s already a discussion that if the United States withdraws, for example, from the international monetary fund, that the headquarters would be relocated to Japan because under the UN or the IMF charter, the headquarters goes to the largest contributor.
It would be very interesting if the United States does withdraw from the United Nations and that potentially could give China just the opening of a lifetime to relocate the UN to Beijing. And if it becomes the largest funder and if it wants to see these other governance architectures that it has hitched to the United Nations in these GGI, GDI, all these documents, they’re all based on multilateralism and the United Nations. This could be an unbelievable transformational moment in geopolitics.
Again, if the United States walks away, there is an opening to say, if you don’t want to be part of the UN, that’s fine. We’re moving this thing to Asia. Yeah.
Highly speculative, but we’re in that realm of like, holy crap kind of moments.
COBUS VAN STADEN: Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, as, as you were saying, you know, in all of these initiatives, China keeps name-checking the UN charter as the basis for this organization, you know, kind of, and the UN is the center of it.
ERIC OLANDER: So, you know, If it falls apart, these GGI, these, then those things fall apart too. So if the UN goes away as a functioning institution, China’s governance proposals also suffer tremendously. So China may have a vested interest in somehow making sure the UN survives at a minimal level.
Exactly.
COBUS VAN STADEN: You know, we should keep in mind that the UN remains the, really the only place where the vast majority of countries around the world actually have some kind of formal vote on something, on international issues. You know, all of the, all of the other, even inclusive bodies, like the G20, for example, even the G77, you know, the G77 has no, there’s no implementation, but like the, you know, like the, the, the G20, you know, kind of remains a very exclusive club. So it really is the only architecture for global decision-making.
So, so it’s valuable in that sense. Other thing is of course, that it’s notoriously dysfunctional and has not really managed to get much done at all. So any kind of like real UN reform would have to take on UN decision-making in addition to like voting share and so on.
So, so that’s a big job. So we’ll, we’ll have to see.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. I mean, it is a big job, but if we’re in a space where the US withdraws, which was an inconceivable thought just a few years ago, but let’s say that’s the reality that we’re in. You could imagine that the vetoes for France and Britain, I mean, like what?
No longer is relevant anymore. So there would be a wholesale restructuring to reflect the reality that we’re in today, where Indonesia, Nigeria, Africa, you know, African countries as a block, but also, you know, developing countries more broadly have a much more prominent say. And certainly India would want something like that.
Well, these are fascinating times, Cobus, and a lot to think about. I mean, big issues that we couldn’t even have imagined a few years ago. We may be on the doorstep of it.
And again, China’s just inextricably linked to some of these things and just wonderful to have the conversation with Lungani also, again, just to be able to see young scholars who are still interested in this topic, Cobus, it’s really exciting for us to be able to showcase the great work that they’re doing. That’s what we do at the China Global South Project. We love to showcase the work by people like Lungani.
And if you want to support the work that we’re doing in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, bring you fact-based, agenda-free, just right down the middle, balls and strikes kind of coverage of what the Chinese are doing, the best way to do it is just to go to ChinaGlobalSouth.com slash subscribe. Subscriptions start at $19 a month for everybody. And then if you’re a student, you get a $10 a month subscription.
We want to make it available for students and teachers. Go ahead and email me, Eric, at ChinaGlobalSouth.com if you’re a student or teacher and want that discount link. We’ll be back again next week with another edition of the China in Africa podcast for Cobus van Staden in Cape Town.
I’m Eric Olander. Thank you so much for listening and for watching.
