Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio is in the midst of a five-day visit to China that included talks with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang, among other high-level officials. While Bio is getting a lot of face-time with China’s political elites, the more pressing question is what he is actually getting out of the visit.
Tobi Oshodi, a political science lecturer at Lagos State University and a long-time Africa-China scholar, joins Eric & Cobus to discuss the visit and the current state of Chinese engagement in Nigeria. Tobi also shares his outlook on how Nigeria is preparing for this year’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation gathering that will take place later this year in Beijing.
Show Notes:
- Reuters: China promises investment in impoverished Sierra Leone
- Semafor: Africa’s biggest city is nervous about a Chinese-built metro system by Alexander Onukwue
- The Cable: FG: China will fund Abuja-Kano, P’Harcourt-Maiduguri railway projects by Victor Ejechi
About Tobi Oshodi:
Tobi Oshodi Abdul-Gafar holds a PhD in Social Sciences from KU Leuven and currently lectures in the Department of Political Science, Lagos State University (LASU). His research interests broadly revolve around international relations, comparative politics, and development studies – with a strong bias for China in Africa, the ‘youth question’ and nation-building in multi-ethnic countries, and qualitative methodologies. A former journalist at Vanguard newspaper, he was a fellow of the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) Next Generation of Social Science in Africa program (2013-2014) and a University of Edinburgh’s Centre for African Studies Catalyst Fellow and Non-Residential Catalyst Fellow (2019-2020). His PhD research – on the contemporary relevance of Ghana’s national youth service program – at the multidisciplinary Centre for Research on Peace and Development in Leuven was fully sponsored by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and the Leuven Special Fund. He has recently been offered the American Council of Learned Societies African Humanities Program (ACLS/AHP) postdoctoral fellowship (2020-2021) to conduct research for his first book entitled ‘Imageries of Mao Zedong’s China in Ghanaian newspapers, 1957-1976.’ He is a co-founder of Conflict Research Network West Africa (CORN – West Africa). Abdul-Gafar has published several articles and presented his research findings at major conferences in Africa, Europe, and North America.
Transcript:
Eric Olander: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the China in Africa Podcast. I’m Eric Olander, and, as always, I’m joined by China Global South’s Managing Editor, Cobus Van Staden, from China Johannesburg, South Africa. A very good afternoon to you, Cobus.
Cobus van Staden: Good afternoon, Cobus.
Eric: Cobus, at the time of our recording, Sierra Leone’s president, Julius Maada Bio, is, I think, the first African leader to visit China this year, in 2024. I wasn’t 100% sure, and you weren’t 100% sure. We can’t really recall, but I do think he’s the first one there. He arrived this week for a five-day visit. Now, what’s interesting, Cobus, is that leading up to the big Xi meetings that they have with President Xi Jinping, normally they’ve been starting these visits down in Shenzhen and taking them to Shanghai, sometimes even going to Fujian, and then ending up in Beijing. Well, President Bio instead landed in Beijing and kicked off his tour with really a flurry of high-level discussions that he had, both with Zhao Leji, who is the top legislator in China, also Premier Li Qiang, and then eventually with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
What’s interesting, Cobus, when you look at the outcomes of these discussions and what they actually accomplish, and this is what I’d like to get your take on, this is at least the third or fourth visit in the post-pandemic era where an African leader has gone to Beijing, done all the pompous circumstance, has laid the wreath on Tiananmen Square, has all the beautiful flags on Chang’an Avenue. There’s so much pomp and circumstance that goes into these visits, but when you look at actually what comes out of them, these MOUs that they sign, oftentimes are worthless pieces of paper that have no firm commitments to it, no pledges to them, no contracts assigned to them. And that’s very different than what it was in the pre-pandemic era when African leaders would go to Beijing and they would walk away oftentimes with loans, with projects, with private contracts from companies like Huawei.
And now when we look at the visits of Felix Tshisekedi from the DRC, also William Ruto from Kenya, and now President Bio from Sierra Leone — all three are going to be coming home effectively empty-handed. And it just makes me wonder what the value of these visits are to these leaders if they’re not getting something tangible in return.
Cobus: You know, one should point out too that a small country like Sierra Leone, their relationship with China was always of a different nature than a country like Nigeria’s. But still, as you say, there seems to be a kind of a weighting of optics over substance, and we can clearly see what China’s getting out of those optics just in terms of kind of signaling global south’s solidarity and making sure that these kind of media moments get beamed back to Africa. But as you say, it’s very difficult to say what the African countries are getting out of it and why they’re bothering at the moment.
Eric: And then there’s another cringey moment that came out of the first day. I don’t know what to think of it. I’d like to get your take, and I’m really excited to have our guest on with us to get his take as well. But when President Bio tweeted the summary of his day on X, he said, “I commended President Jinping for his transformative leadership that has repositioned China globally and thanked him for his invaluable partnership.” Eh, you know…
Cobus: It gives the vibe of a high school student just barely covering the exam work he has.
Eric: I know. But also, when you’re saying ‘Jinping,’ it’s like, I thank President Joe. Do you know what I mean? Again, it’s not a big deal, okay? In the scheme of things. What it does indicate, though, is that either the president who’s writing this tweet or his staff who’s writing this tweet, does not understand some of the fundamentals and the basics of engagement with the Chinese. That it is President Xi Jinping — not President Jinping. And it makes me wonder, again, this question of China literacy that we’ve been talking about for the past couple of years. And when you post it on X, and by the way, he’s got a premium account, okay? That you can edit.
This post has been up now since February 29th for more than 24 hours, and nobody’s gone in and edited that and changed it to the proper name. Someone would think that protocol between heads of state would require that you get the names right. I don’t know. Let’s get a take on this from somebody who might be able to shed some light on this, and I’d love to get his perspective on this, and plus all things between China and Nigeria — one of our old friends of the show, Tobi Oshodi, who is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Lagos State University. Tobi, a very good morning to you. Great to have you back on the show.
Tobi Oshodi: Thank you. Good morning, Eric. Nice to be on the show again. Thanks.
Eric: It’s great to hear your voice again. It’s been a while. We always enjoy the chance to speak with you. Before we get into China-Nigeria issues, I’d love to get your take on these questions of these visits. And Cobus talked about that the optics work, very much in China’s favor, particularly as China’s facing such a difficult environment in Asia with Europe, with United States, and others, and African leaders present China with a wonderful photo opportunity to lean into its relationship with global south countries. But then the question comes — what does a leader like President Bio get out of these visits? And I guess the same could be said for Hakainde Hichilema and, again, Felix Tshisekedi, and William Ruto, among others, who’ve gone to China in the past six months. What are some of the tangible benefits that you think these visits produce for them, particularly because they’re so long? Five, six days.
Tobi: I think for me, the visits are very useful. They’re quite useful. And I’ll speak from the point of view of, in Nigeria, I read about the Nigerian government, represented by the vice president of Nigeria, going to begin last year, for instance. And if you’re non-Nigerian, if you come to Nigeria, you see the manifestation of Chinese presence in the infrastructure — railway infrastructure to be specific. But if you are a follower of Nigeria’s development discourse, you’ll notice that for some time, there has been some kind of issue with the continuation of some Chinese projects in Nigeria. But in this case, the vice president visited Beijing, just like the Sierra Leonian president, photo there was a lot of nice pictures, but at the end of the day, he was able to get the Chinese to be, again, interested in a major railway infrastructure in the country.
His visit was late last year. But as we speak, you can see some level of movement, renewed interest in the particular infrastructure that I talked about. Then the second point, which is really a no-brainer is African countries really need China. It’s almost like a cliché now whether you talk about development, finance, the provision of infrastructure. In many African countries, China is a leading player. In fact, from where I sit in Nigeria, there’s really no competition in terms of railway infrastructure. There is no competition. So, whether or not they achieve the goal, the idea in itself, the hope, the aspiration that China can actually support some of this infrastructure would continue to drive African leaders to go visit and say some of those niceties. But maybe I should just jump in about the tweet of the Sierra Leonian president.
Again, I’m also hoping that, before long, the president’s attention will probably be drawn into this and they can make the correction. But again, I think, for me, I’m not sure if that is something that is so, so super fundamental beyond the message of the tweet itself, which is China is doing great, and we are happy to be a part of that greatness. We’re hoping that it can trickle down into Sierra Leone. That is the idea that I get from it. Whether the name was actually… I leave that to the president’s protocol people to make the necessary correction.
Cobus: Well, Tobi, just following up on that, actually, I wanted to ask you, do you think this reflects, as we’ve been complaining for, it feels like years that this reflects a lack of China capacity on the side of the government in Sierra Leone? Or do you think it reflects that they don’t really care?
Tobi: From the last point, it is not a question about they don’t really care. As I mentioned, they care. African countries want to have cordial relationship with China. But again, having a cordial relationship with China presupposes many things, and I’m hoping we’ll touch on that too. One aspect is actually knowledge. Knowledge, not necessarily in terms of Chinese development presence on the continent, but even cultural. You understand? How do Africans refer to Chinese? Even as scholars, there are instances where you review articles. I also made the mistakes initially, when I started, by using the last name as the first name and first name as the last name. But I think with more exposure with deeper exchanges, some of those things are actually resolved.
But for me, it is interesting. But the president got into office 2018, I think, if I’m not wrong, but I stand to be corrected, it’s almost like an unexpected mistake, because since 2018, he has had some level of exchanges with President Xi Jinping, so let me just leave it at that. I expect that that would be corrected.
Eric: Again, we don’t want to blow this out of proportion. As you pointed out, it could just be an innocent mistake, but again, it also could potentially indicate a lack of sophistication on understanding some of these basic things. And we are 2024 now. He’s been in office for many years. He’s dealt with the Chinese. The Chinese experiment in Africa and the modern era is now going into a quarter of a century now. So, it’s kind of time for people to not make these basic mistakes anymore when dealing with the Chinese. In one sense. That’s just that. But let’s pick up the conversation about what you talked about with Vice President Kashim Shettima, who went to the Belt & Road Forum last October. Lots of Nigerian press coverage came out of those conversations that China is going to step up financing all of the railway projects that had been stalled.
In fact, let me read you a headline from Channels TV — China to refinance complete the Abuja-Kano, the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri Railways according to the Vice President. Now, those railways alone are north of $10 billion, if I remember correctly. And let’s take into context that the Chinese in 2022 financed a total of $922 million for the entire African continent. And so, something didn’t make sense to me that the Chinese are suddenly going to finance more than $10 billion of railways for one country that they have resisted financing for, I think, going on five, six, seven years now. And suddenly they’re going to do that when that would be almost tenfold what they spent on the entire continent in ’22. And so, something didn’t make sense to me here, and I’m wondering if the, I don’t know, maybe you can explain to me what’s happening in terms of those railway projects and if the money is actually coming through, and are we already now starting to see the construction resume?
Tobi: Yes, that’s a very brilliant question, but that question should actually be located within a number of contexts, whether you want to look at the software. Today, as we speak, the president of Nigeria is commissioning what is popularly referred to as the Red Line, a railway that is built by China. In Lagos State, before now, the Blue Rail was also launched.
Eric: But that Blue Line was not financed by China. That was financed by Lagos, correct?
Tobi: Yes.
Eric: So, the Chinese were just the contractors on that?
Tobi: Yes.
Eric: Okay.
Tobi: But if you go, you see, of course, sort of the Chinese inscription just to give you an idea that this is more or less a project. And you need to also understand the utility of the two lines. Especially when it is completed, moving 1 million people almost on a daily basis is just incredible, is mind-boggling. And that is actually happening in a country that China has one of its largest trade relations with, you understand? Last year, think about 22 billion there about trade. Most of these are actually finished goods from China coming into Nigeria. So, you think about the benefit of having that network that would in the long run also contribute to the movement of these same Chinese goods being imported to Nigeria. So, there is a bigger picture beyond the soft power of China doing this, China as your friend, this brotherly-sisterhood kind of discourse to be pragmatic, the practical benefits in the long term to China.
For me, I think it’s not surprising. Then again, I think one point I should also mention is China-Africa or China-Nigeria infrastructural relationship has always been chaotic. A contract is signed this year. In fact, take the example of the Blue rail. The idea was mooted 2003. Finance was approved 2008. But it did not start functioning until 2023. And the Chinese had to be patient, the changes in government, to still wait until it is done.
Eric: But Lagos is actually doing better than Abuja because the light rail in Abuja, which was a… it’s a 27-kilometer light rail. Well, I think the deal was closed in 2020. They borrowed 500 million from the China Exim Bank. The Nigerian taxpayer is paying $50 million a year to service that loan, and yet there’s no light rail. Construction hasn’t even started. So at least Lagos is up and running. Abuja is even worse, right?
Tobi: Yes. But there is also Kaduna-Abuja, which has been fantastic.
Eric: That’s the SGR, right? That’s the SGR, correct?
Tobi: Yes. The idea is, like I said, it is chaotic. Project, contract are signed, but timing has been problematic. And I think the Chinese also understand that because if you sign an agreement to complete a project for like four or five years, and all of a sudden it is taking 10 years, and you are still not done, yet they are still interested in who sitting, tells you something about both parties. But for me, I think it tells you China is being flexible to the point of working at its own pace as well as at the pace of the host government, in this case in Nigeria. So that for me, it’s something that, again, we should also interrogate as researchers, to try to have some understanding of why that happens and why there has not been frustration on both sides, if you like.
Cobus: Just following on that point, what were some of the complicating factors that made these projects stretch out for so long? Like, was it fully like issues on the Nigerian side only? Were the Chinese kind of like impatiently waiting on the side? Or were there issues within the China-Nigeria interaction, also on the Chinese side that also caused delays?
Tobi: I think it’s both. It’s no secret that China as a country is also facing its own local challenges that actually forced it to rethink some of those agreements. But on the Nigerian side, there’s also that challenge in terms of policy stability. And at some point, don’t forget also that the issue of this railway became a topical, embarrassing issue for China, I think 2021 thereabout, where…
Eric: Which railway are we talking about, by the way? Because we’ve talked about a bunch of railways, which one are you referring to?
Tobi We’re talking about the Lagos-Ibadan, for instance.
Eric: Oh, okay.
Tobi: Yes, where people were raising questions about the cost, and the minister tried to say, “Okay, we need to be careful because we still need Chinese finance, and if we, as a government, if the National Assembly proceeds to embarrass the Chinese, it may actually have implication for the continuous funding,” which eventually happened, if you ask me, of some of this infrastructure. Then, of course, there’s the issue of security. It’s no news that Nigeria is confronted by its own security challenges. The Kaduna-Abuja railway, I’m sure you heard about the attack where the railway was attacked, passengers, some were killed, some were kidnapped, and you can imagine the bad press that followed that.
Eric: The worst part about that attack was beyond the horrible deaths and the misery that people suffered was that the train was offline, I think, for about eight months. And yet every day that that train is not carrying people and generating revenue only compounds the difficulty of repaying the debts to the Chinese who built that line. So, there was not only a disruption in the transportation that was vital — it also shook the confidence of the Nigerian people who said they were told that the railways were your way of avoiding the bandits on the roads. And now all of a sudden, the bandits came onto the railway and it shook the confidence of this whole project of expanding rail and standard gauge railway across the country. And so, it really had a big impact, I think.
Tobi: Excellent. Excellent. So, you just articulated the response of Nigerians that we’re not willing to go on the railway. The railway also had to close to rethink its own security measures. And imagine the Chinese contractors that would’ve been working on new railway projects that would also pass along some of those hot spot areas. So, that in itself was quite a difficult situation if you ask me, and I don’t need to talk about COVID and its implication on some of those infrastructure.
Eric: Well, this infrastructure is very closely related in terms of popular perceptions of the Chinese in Nigeria. And I want to bring you some numbers from our friend, Joseph Asunka, who is the CEO of Afrobarometer, and they are about to release their new public opinion surveys of the U.S., the Chinese, and others in Africa. They do one every two or three years. And he was at an Atlantic Council event last week in Washington, D.C. and revealed some of the preliminary findings of their numbers. And Cobus, I’d like to get your take on this as well. The Chinese held their popularity and their public opinion rating at 52% among African publics. I think they survey more than 20 countries. That is a little bit surprising in part because there’s been this cutback in infrastructure spending, this cutback in development engagement, cutback in high-level visits.
The Chinese are not as visible today in Africa as they were before the pandemic, but yet, according to Afrobarometer, their numbers are holding. In fact, the public opinion numbers for the Chinese are higher than the United States according to Afrobarometer, if I remember correctly. And I’d like to get your take on that in Nigeria. What’s your sentiment in terms of perceptions of the Chinese today? And it’s particularly salient for us because there’s a lot of discussion outside of Africa about the U.S.-China competition in the global south. Nigeria is a key player in all of that, given its enormous size and its clout as the largest country and the largest economy on the continent. What do you read, as a scholar looking at this, in terms of how people perceive China today in Nigeria?
Tobi: For me, that is a brilliant question, but again, without talking about issues of methodology and the rest of it, perception is built on a lot of things. The fact that you have, in the Nigerian context I’m talking about, you see those infrastructures that are Chinese built, whether or not they are new infrastructures coming on board is a totally new ball game. But you see the ones that are actually functioning, people benefiting from it — take, for example, the airports. The Nigerian airports, whether you look at Lagos, Abuja, whatever, being either reconstructed by China or their extension built by China. So that would’ve impact on perception. Again, the railway that I just talked about; it would be interesting to think about what some of those people that use the railway would think about China.
You live in a state like Lagos where the traffic can be quite problematic, really difficult. If you are working on the island and you’re living on the mainland, sometimes it’s a nightmare. You wake as early as 5:00 AM, 6:00 AM to get to work, 9:00 at times, coming back almost the same time or worse. But you now have a railway system that is being built, provided by China. Naturally, that would’ve a positive impact. And you have a context where, of course, the U.S. and the old argument of the Beijing Post, I mean, the Washington Post, Washington consensus, where the issue has always been with good governance and things like that. And people hardly see that same manifestation that China is bringing to the table. So, for me, I’m really not interested.
But again, I talked about the methodology. For me, it’ll be interesting to also understand the category. You talk about students, you talk about the media, you try to understand who some of these participants are and try to make sense of why they have that perception. Cobus, you can also intervene.
Cobus: Yeah, no, absolutely. Like, just following on from what Tobi was saying, I think maybe one of the factors that we’re seeing at play here is that this kind of infrastructure provision, once infrastructure is in it remains visible on the landscape for a long time, right? Maybe one is also seeing a kind of a soft power long tail in a way, like a continued, albeit somewhat diminished kind of value, like soft power dividend coming from infrastructure provision, even if that infrastructure provision has tapered down quite a lot over the last few years. And that, it may be simply the physicality of something like a rail system, kind of counts for a lot. In a moment where, as we’ve discussed many times, the kind of investments coming from Western countries are frequently more into soft infrastructure, into supporting civil society and health, and so on.
Eric: Yeah, so sorry to interrupt you. Just on that particular point, that’s a double-edged sword, though, as you pointed out, because you’re right, the infrastructure is very visible, it’s very durable. But if you recall when the Addis Ababa light rail, that China also built, ran into some problems, I think it was last year that the local government had not kept up with maintenance for it, that the blame went to the Chinese. I got all these calls from reporters saying, “Look at the crappy Chinese infrastructure in Addis Ababa. They built us this light rail and it doesn’t work.” Well, the problem was it wasn’t up to the Chinese to maintain this thing.
Cobus: Yes.
Eric: They built it, they handed it over to the local government — it’s up to the local government, much like it is in Legos to do the same, but yet the Chinese got the blame for the infrastructure that was not well maintained by the local government. It works both ways. It can work both ways.
Cobus: Yes, definitely. And that then feeds into a bunch of other kind of narratives that Africa tells about itself, right? Including that it’s always at the bottom of the pile and that it has so few choices, and etc. But that doesn’t necessarily change the fact that China is the only one building this country infrastructure to begin with, you know? So, it could very definitely trigger some anti-Chinese resentment. I mean, I think it certainly is, but that doesn’t change the bigger thing that no one else is kind of rushing to build railways in Africa, either. Tobi, just a step sideways in relation to the security issues around the railway that Eric was raising, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you see China’s engagement in West African peace and security evolving.
Because in the last FOCAC, when the crisis in the Sahel were already kind of, well on their way, there were all these calls from Senegal that China should get more involved in UN peacekeeping in the region. And China has done a bunch of… they pledged a bunch of kind of support mechanisms, and so on for peace and security, but they haven’t gotten more involved. And in the intervening years, the Sahel particularly has seen numerous coups and completely kind of transformed security situation. So, I was wondering how, just kind of recapping over the last few years, how you see China’s involvement in that particular issue evolving.
Tobi: If you ask me, I think China’s not really changed, not really changed in the sense that the kind of military relationship it has is one of, I think in Ghana, for example, I think they provided some yeah, I wouldn’t say cosmetic, but supporting the building of some structures in the barracks. But when it comes to hardcore provision of military weapons and ammunition, I think China is also beginning to demonstrate that it can be a supporter of African countries. And I’m thinking of the relationship between Nigeria and China, where I think at some point the Nigerian government, I think the last one actually got a little bit of support from China. But I’m saying China is not doing something so new in the sense that there is no doubt — oh, China will be the solution kind of vibe.
I don’t think that is what is happening here. But in terms of maybe supporting peacekeeping and things like that, they are known to have been doing that. But it’s difficult for me to see China as a major player relative to the U.S., France, or even Russia. So, I think for me, China is just beginning to try to catch up, not even catch up, just trying to catch up. But that is my personal… that is the way I see. I don’t see China as a major player in terms of providing that kind of answer to the security, some of the security challenges that African countries face.
Eric: Tobi, we have covered a lot of ground in our conversation today, from public opinion, to politics, to infrastructure, and now security. Since this is a year, a year of FOCAC, the Forum on China Africa Cooperation, one of the things that we’re doing anytime we speak with African scholars like yourself is to try and get a sense of what you think — Nigeria and African countries as a whole — should be asking of China in the FOCAC, what should be their strategy? And what do you think China will be asking of Africa in return? Give us a little bit of your thinking about FOCAC as governments and civil society, academics, journalists, all ramp up for what will likely be a very, very closely watched event later on this year.
Tobi: For me, of course, infrastructure should be on the checklist of African countries leaders, but I’m also looking at energy, and I’m already seeing some interesting landmark deals, some important pilots, programs coming on board. Energy in the sense that they talk about climate change is, it’s a reality, and African countries are also getting involved strongly in this conversation. So, you see, I imagine building on some of the deals on renewable, for instance, there has been some important deals. For instance, there was an agreement signed between the Ministry of Energy in Nigeria and the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment late December last year to support the development of a battery manufacturing plant in Nigeria.
And I noticed that the same thing is happening, I think, in the West African corridor, which for me is quite interesting. But it is also interesting that even before that, in Lagos, for instance, Yutong started piloting two buses, mass transit buses, May 2023, 2 pilot, I mean mass transit bosses in Lagos. And the idea is if it works out fine, the Lagos state, one of the most populous state in Nigeria, and a state that has population even more than some small African countries, Lagos can key into this idea of Chinese electric vehicles, then I think that will be a big changer, especially within the context where the cost of oil in African countries is not as cheap as it used to be.
In Nigeria for instance, the cost was increased and it’s really affecting people. So, if there is now that opportunity for people to use electric vehicles with cheaper costs, of course, that would be in important. In the same context, you see Chinese electric motorcycles increasing in a place like Lagos. In Ghana, for instance, you see startups partnering with Chinese companies to develop that same market. So, for me, I think FOCAC renewable energy should be on the agenda. And as I said, infrastructure, Africa needs infrastructure. And it’ll be strange if African leaders change the conversation. The request from China has been similar across the years across the FOCAC. So, this FOCAC won’t make too much of a difference for me if you ask.
Eric: Okay. Tobi Oshodi is a lecturer at the department of Political Science at Lagos State University, and, as you can hear, one of the smartest guys out there on China-Nigeria, China-Africa relations. He’s an old friend of ours, an old friend of the show. He’s been doing this for a very long time, and is one of the most knowledgeable guys in this space. Tobi, if people want to follow what you’re reading and writing, where can they find you?
Tobi: Well, Twitter. I try to be as frequent as possible on Twitter, LinkedIn. But if you don’t mind, I would just quickly want to chip in a quick, if you want, publicity for researchers working on Africa-China relations, which is something that I’m now getting very involved in, committing my time.
Eric: Yes, please do.
Tobi: We’re building a network and the idea is to not only support ourselves, but also to create a solid foundation for the next generation of researchers in that space — Nigeria, Africa, China Research Network. We’ll be having a first conference in May, and we are inviting doctoral students, experience researchers to come and have a conversation on how to enrich ourselves, how to catch up with Africa-China encounter in Nigeria, how to solidify the expert base of that piece. And some of the things we’ll be doing in the network, I’ll be happy to share on my social media handles. Thank you.
Eric: And please share with us all of the information, and we’ll pass it on as well. And so, we’re looking forward to speaking with you about that later in May. It’d be great to have you back after the conference to tell us how it went and what were some of the accomplishments on that. Once again, Tobi Oshodi from the Department of Political Science at Lagos State University. Tobi, thanks so much for your time today.
Tobi: Thank you.
Eric: Cobus, I get so energized every time we talk to Tobi because the conversation just goes in all these unexpected places and topics. And I see what he’s saying, though, about the need for infrastructure. And Africa’s infrastructure deficit has not narrowed at all. In fact, it’s probably widened now in the post-pandemic era as financing has become more difficult. I am just skeptical, though, that China is going to be the one that’s going to fund these big infrastructure projects. I’m still skeptical, and we didn’t get a hundred percent of a clear answer in terms of whether or not they are funding this $10 billion of railway projects in Nigeria, or whether that was a misreading by Channels TV and some of the other Nigerian media, but it just seems to me that the Chinese economy is not in a place right now where they’re going to sign big checks for big major infrastructure projects — the likes that Africa and African countries need right now so badly. I’m just not sure that that China 2024 is ready to do what China 2016 and 2015 did.
Cobus: Thinking about this, increasingly, one, I’m feeling a strong need to push this conversation beyond simply what’s possible in China. Because what’s possible in China is, obviously, is a really big part of the calculus, but I think it also seems to me that, on the African side, there seems to be sometimes stuck in a little bit of like a tunnel vision loop around infrastructure. Because on the one hand, obviously, infrastructure is really important. On the other hand, I think one can pick and choose between which kinds of infrastructure are politically possible in China and which are not, right? As you say, I don’t think China is rushing to build another standard gauge railway in Africa soon. On the other hand, we know there’s a reason why the Chinese are pushing energy connectivity, for example, right?
It’s because they have a massive oversupply within the country, particularly on green energy and facing increasing kind of barriers everywhere else. For example, now, like there’s this strong talk in both Europe and the U.S. about kind of slapping tariffs on Chinese solar panels, which from a climate perspective is ludicrous, but obviously in the kind of short-termist kind of like trade perspective within Washington, it makes a lot of sense. So, that’s a kind of infrastructure that Africa has a huge demand for, that China has a huge supply of, and that China is politically trying to push internationally. That’s different from building a big SGR network, right?
That’s a lot more possible, particularly if you scale it down, and you’re talking about smaller grids or you’re talking about cities rather than old countries. On the Chinese side… you can have a pragmatic conversation about putting in that infrastructure, which is also super needed in Africa, even though building 5,000 kilometers of road isn’t necessarily what China’s in the market for at the moment. So, I want more nuance and I want more Kind of strategic thinking on the African side about what’s possible in China on the infrastructure side, rather than just the continuous drumbeat of we need infrastructure, we have such a huge gap — and China should provide. You know what I mean? We need more nuance in this conversation.
Eric: It’s about being tactical and understanding what the Chinese are able to give in their current political environment and what they’re willing to do that aligns with their strategy. And what I mean by able to give is that there is real domestic pushback now in China towards giving money or extending loans or any type of financial support for developing countries. These are topics that are now censored regularly on Chinese social media. We saw this in 2018 after FOCAC as well, that happened. So, it’s not even a new topic. It’s even more sensitive today, though, as the Chinese economy is facing so many more difficulties than it faced back in 2018. Unimaginable to think of where we are today compared to where we were back then in terms of the plunge in foreign direct investment, in terms of the high youth unemployment, the stuttering property market — all these things.
So, the idea that China will turn around and say $10 billion for Nigerian rail is never going to float domestically in politics. Now, the Chinese have the option, of course, of shutting that conversation down, which is what they do. But that being said, I think, to your point, which is so important, is for African countries, and not just African countries, by the way, this applies pretty much everywhere, is that you have to know what you want out of the Chinese. And so, going in with what you’re talking about with a plan for solar means that you’re probably going to get a much better response than if you go in saying, “I want to rebuild 5,000 kilometers of roads.” That’s just not what the Chinese are going to do. They’re not going to put the loans out. They’re not in that space to do that. Maybe as EPC contractors. So, maybe just if you pay for it, they’ll come and build it.
But that’s a contract. That’s not a loan. It just got me thinking, too, about our conversation with Tobi about the public opinion question in that the power of infrastructure in terms of shaping public opinion and how the Lagos light rail, because it’s got the Chinese characters in the carriages and because everybody knows that the Chinese built this, many people probably also think that the Chinese paid for it, which, again, they did not. But in this case, they get the credit for assuming that they helped make it happen. It brings me back to a couple weeks ago, I mentioned this Atlantic Council conference that was online, and you guys can go watch it. It’s about two full days of conferences. And in the second day, they opened up with a speech by the president of the International Republican Institute, I forget his name, but he basically did a speech for 45 minutes of here’s 800 reasons why China sucks.
China’s bad, China’s terrible, China’s malign — China’s bad, China’s terrible, China’s malign. And it was just 45 minutes of straight China sucks, China sucks, China sucks. And what’s interesting is that each of his individual points alone, if you isolated them from the speech, were true. There was a lot of things that actually added up, that they were absolutely true. The speech didn’t sit well with me, Cobus. I couldn’t figure out why. And then I was having dinner the other night here in Saigon with somebody who just hates the United States. I mean, just nothing is good about the United States. And basically, the whole dinner was the U.S. sucks, the U.S. is maligned, the U.S. intervenes — the U.S. sucks, the U.S. is terrible, imperialistic, blah, blah, blah. And then it kind of came to me is when you sit there and cherry-pick like this, and you’re very highly selective on what you’re looking at, it’s very reductive.
And then you look at a guy like Tobi, who is so nuanced in his understanding, who acknowledges the shortcomings of China, but at the same time says, “You know what? People see the value of this infrastructure that they built. The Americans didn’t build it, the Belgians didn’t build it, the French didn’t build it. The Chinese built the Lagos light rail.” And when they’re zipping past the awful traffic in Lagos, they think to themselves, “China built this.” And that’s why I think the reductive arguments of the president of the International Republic Institute fall down in places where he’s specifically trying to persuade to like the American way of doing things. His argument fails immediately when it lands in a place like Nigeria because of the points that Tobi made. I’d be interested to get your reaction to that.
Cobus: Yep, I completely agree. I think, frequently, if one just listens to one of the two sides, and in my current work, I focus a lot on narrative, particularly very interested in Chinese versus U.S. narratives in Africa. And if you listen to either one of those two sides, you can’t imagine why Africa would want to work with the other side. If you just listen to the U.S., it’s almost impossible to imagine why Africa’s working with China. And if you just listen to China, it’s almost impossible to imagine why Africa’s working with the U.S. And that’s a kind of an illustration of this cherry-picking. And the reality is, is a messy reality that neither Washington nor Beijing likes, is that neither of the two can do everything. And that the only way for Africa to move forward is to have them both and a bunch of other kind of external actors in there.
And that’s going to be messy, and it’s going to not make any sense the way that it works, but that’s the only way that that actually has any kind of real pragmatic value. They can’t replace each other. That’s the point. And then in a moment where there’s increasingly strident pressure, both from Washington and Beijing in trying to herd these different countries into these different camps, the only way that they can respond is by complicating these narratives and being difficult to understand. Because their realities mean that pragmatic and complicated cooperation with a bunch of people who don’t sit around the same table is the only option.
Eric: Yeah, it reminds me what you’re saying of what Evan Feigenbaum, who’s the vice president over at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, he says this all the time, that for many of these countries, it’s a both-and equation rather than either-or equation. And that is something that I think is lost on the partisans in Washington and Beijing. And you’re right, oftentimes they are saying the same thing about each other — you suck. No, you suck. No, you suck. No, you suck. And the nuance gets lost in all of that. But I invite people to check out what the Atlantic Council did. I thought day one of the conference was fantastic. I thought day two was less interesting, but because it was much more partisan. But I think it’s worth everybody to check out. Just go to the Atlantic Council website. If you’re a subscriber to ours, we put the links and the videos embedded in our stories.
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