Chinese and African governments are beginning to negotiate the agenda for the upcoming Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit that will take place in Beijing later this fall.
Development finance, infrastructure, and green technology are all expected to be prominent themes, but this year’s event will be considerably different than previous summits, given that it comes at a time of considerable economic uncertainty for both China and African countries.
Hannah Ryder, CEO of the international development consultancy Development Reimagined, recently co-hosted an African ambassadors retreat in China that brought together senior officials from both sides. Hannah joins Eric, Cobus, and Géraud to share a few insights from that retreat and what to expect in the run-up to the FOCAC summit.
Show Notes:
- Africa Center for Strategic Studies: Lessons from China’s Forum Diplomacy in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean by Paul Nantulya and Leland Lazarus
- Development Reimagined: Event: 4th African Ambassadors in China Retreat
- Development Reimagined: What is “the West” missing? Defining an affirmative agenda for engagement in Africa by Hannah Ryder
About Hannah Ryder:
Hannah Ryder is the CEO of Development Reimagined (DR), an independent, African-owned and African-led international development consultancy with offices in Beijing, Nairobi, and London. A former diplomat and economist with over 20 years of experience, she was named one of 100 most influential Africans in 2021 and holds a role as Senior Associate (Non-resident) for the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS). She sits on various boards, including the Environmental Defense Fund, and she is a member of the United Arab Emirates’ International Advisory Council on the New Economy. Prior to her role at DR, Ms. Ryder led the United Nations Development Programme’s work with China to help it scale up and improve its cooperation with other developing countries, including in Africa. She has also played various advisory roles for the UN and OECD and co-authored the seminal Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change in 2006.
Transcript:
Eric Olander: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the China in Africa Podcast, a proud member of the Sinica Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander, and, as always, I’m joined by China Global South’s Managing Editor, Cobus van Staden, in Johannesburg, and our Africa Editor, Geraud Neema, joining us from the beautiful island of Mauritius. A very good afternoon to both of you.
Geraud Neema: Good afternoon.
Cobus van Staden: Good afternoon.
Eric: Guys, we’re going to talk about FOCAC today — that’s the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. You know, we’ve talked about this for so many years over the years going back at least, Cobus, since you and I started the show back in 2010. And I think it’s time for us to kind of do a reset and to rethink how we’ve talked about it because I got some feedback the other day from a listener who says, “You guys keep mentioning FOCAC, but I don’t really know what FOCAC is.” And it just occurred to me that we have a whole new generation of listeners on the show who may be new to the topic. And so it might be worth for us to maybe slow our role just a little bit. And let’s kind of start at the beginning, Cobus, and give us a little bit of a primer on what is this thing, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation — why is it important? And then Geraud, I’m going to come to you to talk about some of the themes. So, I’m giving you a little bit of time to think about it. But what are some of the key themes that are going to be discussed at this coming FOCAC that’s going to take place later this year in Beijing with all the leaders when the summit is held sometime, we think, in September, possibly November? Unlikely it’ll be October. But go ahead, Cobus, and give us a little bit of background.
Cobus: So, FOCAC stands for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. It’s a huge kind of engagement platform between 54 African countries and China. The one African country that’s excluded is Eswatini that still has diplomatic relationships with Taiwan. So, it’s held every three years. It alternates between China and an African country. This year it’s in Beijing. Essentially it sets the tone and the kind of terms of cooperation between China and Africa. And in the process, it’s become one of the most important engagement mechanisms for China with the continent. The most important I think. And it’s also set a template for how China engages with other regions. So, it has similar summits with the Arab world, for example. But even though it wasn’t the first of its kind, I think the Japan’s Tokyo International Conference on African Development, TCAD, I think is earlier.
But to a large extent, I think FOCAC has set a kind of a template for how other external partners deal with Africa. So, since the success of FOCAC, we’ve seen also the development of numerous other similar kind of engagement mechanisms between the African continent and other external partners. So, it has a lot of kind of ongoing processes that different projects being implemented and feedback on those projects and so on, all of these committees meeting and meetings through the years. And then every three years, it’s this kind of, so frequently a summit, like a big gathering of leaders, which is usually also a big red carpet event. And we also usually then see a lot of announcements of new cooperation initiatives. So, that’s what we are looking forward to later this year.
Eric: Sometimes it’s a summit, sometimes it’s a ministerial gathering. We’ve even seen somewhere there’s a little mix of both. It does happen every three years as Cobus mentioned. That’s one of the hallmarks of FOCAC that makes it different than, say, the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, which we just had that in 2022, I think it was, in December 2022. We don’t know when the next U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit will be. Maybe it’ll be a year, maybe it’ll be two years. But one of the hallmarks, again, is that every three years this thing happens. And also it alternates between Africa and China. So, this time it’s going to be in Beijing. Last time it was in Dakar, Senegal. Geraud, very quickly, when we look at some of the themes that have been raised in previous FOCACs and we look ahead to what’s going to happen this year, maybe just give us an overview of some of the things that they talk about.
Geraud: The last FOCAC, that happened in Dakar in 2021. It was really happening at the end of, I’d say at the end, in the middle of the pandemic. And it was a big place that was given to vaccine policy, and because at that time, African country were really deprived from vaccine coming from the global north. So, China really pledged to send a billion of vaccine, I think to Africa, to cover the COVID. Whether that engagement, that commitment was reached, we’re going to talk about it. I doubt it did happen. But also we’re going to be talking about trade because last FOCAC as well, China took a big engagement, commitment to say, “I’m going to be importing much more from Africa in terms of trade.” But that number of 300 billion was not reached for the last three years or even for this year for what that matter.
So, we can expect that to also happen. We can also expect to see with the Belt and Road Initiative 2.0, the BRI 2.0, how China is changing the small and beautiful Chinese approach. We could expect to see how the conversation is going now to turn around that topic, how Africa is now to approach China in terms of financing, in terms of infrastructure. Because the reality is Africa still needs financing that is was getting from China before. But now we have in the background the, that crisis that’s happened in few countries. We do have China changing its opportunity to financing in Africa. So, the Africa continent is still expecting those projects to be financed. We should expect those conversation to take place and what China can often put on the table. And finally, we can also expect to have a geopolitical conversation because now we have the China-U.S. tension over-critical minerals and over different issues. Africa is finding itself in the middle of those geopolitical tension.
Now, many African countries have already expressed the willingness to stay away from that debate, but still we can see some influence coming in into that space. So we also should expect to see those geopolitical conversation to happen in a certain way or in another.
Eric: And so when we look at the final communiques that come out of the various FOCACs, they really do cover a wide spectrum of issues. So, we see a lot on climate change. There’s probably going to be something on AI this time. Lots on the blue economy, on green technology, on infrastructure, all sorts of different things. Again, it’s changed a lot over the years because in the early stages of all of this, back in the early 2000s, China very much set the agenda. In fact, it was basically the Chinese who said, “This is what we’re going to talk about.” Africans kind of took it. But what we’ve seen now is this pushback from a number of African governments over the years to assert far more agency in the process. And it’s a far more collaborative process.
What’s happening now, right now as we speak is that the various African countries through their embassies in Beijing are negotiating what will be on the agenda, what’s a priority to them, how is this all going to work out. And that’s why we are thrilled to have back on the show, our oldest friend of the show, Cobus, this really is going all the way back to the earliest days, Hannah Ryder, who is the CEO of the international development consultancy, Development Reimagined based in Beijing and Nairobi and London. And today, she joins us on the line from London. A very good afternoon to you, Hannah. It’s so wonderful to have the chance to speak with you.
Hannah Ryder: Great to be back on the podcast again. Thank you all.
Eric: Well, we talked about the agenda that’s being formed. You recently helped to co-organize an ambassador’s retreat in China with the African diplomatic delegations. And you did this in partnership with the African Union. Lots heavy hitters were there, including China’s top diplomat for Africa, Wu Peng. He gave one of the opening speeches that was there. Tell us a little bit about this process right now and some of the discussions that were going on at this ambassador’s retreat. I don’t know if it happened in Beijing, but it certainly happened in China. What were some of the themes? What are people talking about in this negotiating phase of FOCAC ahead of the summit that’s going to take place this fall?
Hannah: Yeah, so thanks, Eric. And just to give a bit of background and building on what you’ve already provided, Cobus and Geraud have already provided, so FOCAC is a government-to-government process, as you know. And so it is governments who are really trying to work out what next, what do they want from this summit. And it is quite a useful process and unique in some ways because there is, as you mentioned, the sort of very formal process. It’s in every three years. There are senior officials meetings that occur at regular intervals. So, there’s always a sort of… there’s consistent opportunities for engagement. And on the Chinese side in particular, they have specific follow-up committees where you bring together the different departments and the agencies who are involved to kind of say, “What have we been doing and what do we want next?”
Now on the African side, what we have, especially at the beginning, although FOCAC itself, according to a lot of reports, was a request from the African side for kind of a more consistent engagement with China. So, that was back in 2000 that it began. At the same time, of course, because it’s a government-to-government relationship, it’s normally bilateral. So, the African side has been a lot less centralized because these are sovereign nations engaging. While many countries, more and more countries these days have specific offices for follow up for FOCAC, other countries have got specific China advisors and desk offices who follow the China relationship and so on. At the same time, it’s still quite challenging to bring all of that together and track how things are going because, of course, at FOCAC, the commitments, like in many of these other, any other sort of Africa+1 setting, the commitments are made at a grand level, at a continental level.
And so quite a lot of the questions end up being, you know, what has really happened, who has benefited from all of these different outcomes. So the retreat is in that context, and we created this retreat… Now since 2018, the African Union has had a representative office in China, which is great. And since 2018, we’ve been hosting these retreats in order to create that space for African ambassadors based in Beijing, quite a large cohort of African ambassadors, who are able to then exchange, frankly, in an African-only space, in fact, how things are going, what they have noticed, and also what they would like from the forthcoming summit. And we usually try to organize it annually.
We just had the last one. But obviously COVID was a challenge to that, but this was a fourth edition of this sort of flagship. And it’s been very useful for being able to exchange those sorts of, how have things really changed over the last three years, for example, based on the last FOCAC, 2021, that you mentioned was held in Dakar.
Cobus: I wonder if you could give us a little bit of an idea of which kind of formal processes have followed of in the run-up to FOCAC. How was the FOCAC agenda actually decided?
Hannah: I think officially it’s a consultative process. So, there are a lot of different forums that are set up. There’s the overall big FOCAC summit, but there’s, well, ministerial. But there are things called senior officials meetings that happen every year. And then on top of that, there’s a huge number of, as you are all indicating, how all the different topics of FOCAC have really expanded over time. A huge number of forums where the specific issues are discussed or even progressed with new outcomes and new agreements. So, there’s the think tanks forum, there’s a poverty reduction forum, there’s one on private investment, there’s others on peace and security. So, all of these provide basis for both Africans and Chinese stakeholders to come together and shape that agenda.
At the same time, what we have to recognize is, and this is a key issue with most Africa+1 summit formats, is that on the African side, most of the time we are coming into these discussions from our own bilateral perspective rather than understanding what’s been happening in a continental basis and then also linking in consistently and all the time linking into the full kind of African continental agenda. And that’s why we created the retreat in China because we felt that that was something that was sort of missing and there was an opportunity to be more intentional around linking in the bilateral and the continental and to make sure that all of that adds up.
Geraud: Hannah, you talked about that retreat, and here I’m going to be mentioning one of my criticism I always had about Africa diplomacy, especially when it comes to China. I’ve always noticed that level of, I would say dysfunction between Central Africa. When I say central, I mean the foreigner affairs in African countries and the embassies in Beijing in the way they interact with China and the way they interact with Beijing. Some would have the feeling that the ambassadors, as much as they are representing their country, they don’t really have much of a say into how the country interact with China. We have much more influence coming from central government from the capital city. You’ve been doing this event with African ambassadors for four years already. You have four session, four retreat already happened. Have you seen, have you noticed a change of that dynamic
Have you noticed that African ambassador are becoming much more empowered in their relationship with China in a way that when they speak, they really speak and talk about what’s really going to transpire later on in those FOCAC like agenda? Or do you still feel that there is still a strong influence from foreigner affairs or even the presidency office back home?
Hannah: Yeah, I think several things have happened. First of all, from the African perspective, what we’ve been seeing and what I’ve certainly seen over my time working in China is we’ve seen the prominence of African ambassadors definitely increase not only within China but also from governments. So, the emphasis, for example, we’ve seen ambassadors who have come in who are former ministers, who have had a lot of responsibility, very close lines with their presidents. One of our South Sudan ambassador, for example, has just become the deputy minister for foreign affairs. These are people who are extremely well respected within their government and brings a lot to the table. Some, for example, even come in as political appointees from business, with a very strong business background because the main priority for them, for instance is economic diplomacy.
That in itself has been a change. So you see much more, I think a lot more action and activity from the ambassadors themselves and much more engagement. Second of all, I think it’s hard, right? Because, actually, ambassadors are from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Of course, many of them have a broad sector background, but what the engagement with China is, is an engagement which is crossing all sectors. We’ve talked about that already. So you suddenly have to become a trade expert. You suddenly have to become an expert on Chinese agriculture and health. And that is a lot to do. And of course, sometimes the embassies are also not very well resourced. It’s maybe two or three people in the background who are there to support, also at kind of counselor level. So I think that also creates its own constraints.
But at the same time with the African Union, and also they have a method. In most countries, most ambassadors have this, they have a group, they have a grouping, you have a dean, regional deans, and so on. They’re starting to rely on each other a lot more, and the African union a lot more to coordinate. And therefore, they can bring in, utilize those strengths. And at the same time, the stronger they are, that means that they also have much more engagement from the capital as well in terms of thinking what next, how can we take these things forward? And they become a key part of that question rather than sort of just sitting there in Beijing and not necessarily helping with formulating the strategy.
Of course, also with COVID-19, I would say the ambassadors became extremely important because there was not necessarily that opportunity for a back and forth discussions between the Chinese ambassador in country and those in government in capital. And in 2021, we had some of the strongest outcomes from FOCAC ever, and that’s continued. So they’ve shown their value actually to the process, and I think that should continue.
Eric: Well, let’s go back to the retreat, and without violating the trust of anybody there, can you tell us a little bit about some of the issues that were put forward, and maybe even some of the strains that might exist. We know that there’s a lot of positive aspects of the China-Africa relationship, but this is a relationship that’s also been changing a lot over the years. Debt’s been an issue, infrastructure financing is an issue, illegal fishing in West Africa’s issues. What are some of the areas that you heard at this particular retreat where the African ambassadors are really trying to push harder to assert themselves in this relationship to ensure that those issues are on the agenda? What were people talking about?
Hannah: Yeah, I mean, it’s also a fairly early stage at this point in terms of thinking about what to achieve. The summit is coming up in, in autumn and so therefore there’s still plenty of time to think about outcomes. We divided up the agenda into a number of sections. So we talked about finance, we talked about trade, climate, and development. And we also talked about global governance reform and also a couple of more specific sector areas like agriculture and health. And we had some great speakers and leaders from the continent engage on those questions and really kind of set up the agenda for discussion. And as you said, sort of without violating any trust, this was a Chatham House discussion and it’s meant to be… The reason why we have it as a Chatham House discussion is so that ambassadors and participants can be very frank so that they can talk about the opportunities and the challenges, the things that have gone well and the things that haven’t gone well, and use that in, in planning the way forward.
But as an example, I’ll pick something that Geraud just mentioned earlier on about trade for instance. It’s while the trade targets, in fact, in our understanding, the trade targets are likely to be met, and we can come back to that. But nevertheless, there’s still a feeling from many embassies that there’s a lot more that could be done in terms of opening up, opening up the Chinese market, making it easier to sell products into China and also market in China and those sorts of, those sorts of questions. We talked about climate change, on the climate change area, a very strong view that this is, while absolutely really need Chinese support in terms of renewable energy, we still need the recognition for that Just Transition. We don’t want Chinese or others to stop Chinese finances to stop supporting gas or other certain types of fossil fuel energy.
These sorts of questions came up and as sort of both policy issues but also some international facing issues that countries would like support from China on, which I also thought was quite interesting in itself.
Cobus: In listening to the conversations. Did you get a sense of what the kind of like big areas of focus are going to be and whether we are seeing any new emerging ones, like Eric mentioned, the possibility of cooperation on AI, whether there’s other new fields of cooperation that might be added to this year’s agenda?
Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. I was looking back at a briefing that we actually wrote in 2018. And at that point, we’d identified 13 different areas that usually kind of, if you are looking at all the different sectors that are covered by FOCAC agreements in general, this is what they fall into. They fall into 13 categories. I would say, and I hope we can add to the show notes on that, but I’ll add that briefing in, and we’ll probably update it as well. But I would say two particular areas. And although they have been there before, I think it’s the emphasis and the ambition that will be different this time. For instance, digital corporation, Eric, you mentioned AI, Cobus you’ve mentioned AI. I think that where does that digital corporation go, what is it aiming for, how does it evolve, will definitely be a new interesting area.
And then I would also say the second would be a global governance report. I think building on the support that was provided by China for, for instance, the African union position in the G20, I think there is a real realization, from the African side, that actually maybe China can be a very strong supporter in certain areas for international reform, international governance, and financial reform. So, I think that will be another area to look at. And I think overall the emphasis, and this was definitely the case in 2021, but there’ll be even more emphasis on linking into African agendas, new African institutions. That is most certainly going to be a big push from the African side. And I think that’s the case everywhere with all engagement with Africa with development partners, but definitely with China will be a major one.
Geraud: We’ve mentioned it at the beginning, and one of the strength of the FOCAC is regularity, the fact that it’s happened in the three years and it’s really regular. And one of the downside of having a regular forum is the fact that people can really develop that kind of fatigue of forums like we have that every three years. And that fatigue can come up with the fact that we haven’t seen much happening or we haven’t seen much progress, we haven’t seen based on what was scheduled before the hallmarks and the goal we had amassed that we are supposed to get. We haven’t reached those hallmarks or those goals. Have you had the feeling that when you talk with the ambassadors and different stakeholders, not only those embassies in Beijing but outside Beijing also in Africa, do you get the sense of a certain optimism into this upcoming FOCAC, or do you get the sense that there is a certain fatigue, that it’s became just one of those France Afrique Summit that we used to have before, or you still have that sense that there is this eagerness to go to the summit with the hope and the certainty to get something out of the summit?
Hannah: Yeah, I was going to say, Geraud, that actually the France Afrique Summit was one of the first — the first, right?
Geraud: Exactly, yeah.
Hannah: The Africa+1 is from 1973 onwards. There is a danger of that definitely. At the same time, I think because FOCAC is so well established and it has resulted in quite specific targets that in many cases you can follow, even if it’s tough to follow, something like trade, you can go and look back at the numbers and you can see how it’s changing. And so, as a result, and because it’s also very broad sectors, I think there is still a significant sense of engagement. Definitely at the retreat, we saw so many of the ambassadors and the teams being really quite energetic around how do we make this deliver?
How do we make this deliver? And I think there’s actually in many ways more and more emphasis on delivering from the African side because there’s a fatigue from citizens, right? I think citizens have kind of said, “Look, why are you going to these summits? What are you getting out of them? You need to make sure that you do.” So, definitely, the ambassadors, the heads of state ministers of foreign affairs, ministers of finance also feel that pressure to make sure that this is something that will be tangible, that you can say we got X, Y, and Z out of it. And I have to say as well, I would say there is a significant fatigue when it comes to China because we’ve seen the largest number of African heads of state and government visit China over the last year than we’ve ever seen. So, there’s still significant expectations from the China relationship, I think, but there is, of course, an underlying question of is there going to be finance available? Is that really on the table, for example? How much can China really do around trade? How much can really be done in terms of value addition? Are Chinese stakeholders really committed to this?
And I think those are the sorts of questions that hopefully FOCAC can resolve, this next FOCAC can resolve, but also we’ll need continuous following up and pushing.
Eric: And that’s been one of the hallmarks of FOCAC over the years is these big dollar numbers at the end of the summit. So it went from a small single digit billion dollars of Chinese commitment to $20 billion, to $40 billion to, I think, to $60 billion — huge commitments. Now the last hack summit in Dakar, they didn’t give a precise number, but it was in the high tens of billions. They made promises like they were going to have $300 billion of exports, African exports and Chinese imports. That did not happen. There was a billion dollars of vaccines. That did not materialize. And then there’s this question of, I’ll just give an example of another unfulfilled promise from the Chinese or actually from the FOCAC declaration. If you go back to 2018 in the action plan, Section 3.5.6, it talks about illegal fishing and the blue economy.
“China supports Africa and the capacity building of maritime law enforcement and environmental protection to ensure the security of maritime resources and promote maritime development and cooperation and the promotion of sustainable approaches that are environmentally, socially, and economically effective through the blue economy.” One of the things that we know from Ghanaian, Nigerian, Liberian, lots of West African civil society groups is that Chinese illegal fishing is a very serious problem. And I guess my question is, at what point do they make these grandiose promises in these documents that don’t get fulfilled? Do the African stakeholders then start to get frustrated? Do they start to push back or do they just ignore it and focus on what they can accomplish?
Hannah: I think in most cases, Eric, a lot of these things take two to tango. And while it isn’t everybody, if there should be no commitments that are made that are not expected to be filled, I think part of it is also while they can be commitments and there can be aspirations, some of them will take time and will take a lot of very specific work to unlock. I think phishing is definitely one of those. There has been a lot of work to try to make sure that the illegal phishing doesn’t happen and so on. But at the same time, some of that is to do with governance functions, it’s to do with the actual capacity of African countries themselves and how much resource they choose to dedicate to these issues. It’s not only within Chinese control. And I think that’s part of the challenge, even I would say, part of the challenge for all sides is how do you make a commitment of an intention but that does depend on several things happening all at once?
And I think that’s not just something that is the case with the Chinese outcomes, but it’s also a lot of African engagement in general. We have to really own these outcomes, really make sure that they are ones that we can actually go after and manage, and otherwise there’s just no point making them. So, I think there is that kind of thinking going on around, can we do things that are more specific or more targeted as opposed to covering everything? That is definitely a consideration with FOCAC? Should there be so many different areas of cooperation or is it, yes, there can be lots and lots of cooperation areas, but maybe the outcomes should be very, very specific and targeted. But at the same time, you also don’t want to reduce ambition. You also don’t want to reduce the kind of entrepreneurialism around that exists within something like FOCAC
because even though it is government to government, the implementation of it is by Chinese companies, it’s by African companies, by African banks in some cases, and so on. So, it’s a challenging format. It has its own challenges, for sure, but at the same time, there’s a still a very big push from the African side. We do want target. Africans definitely want targets, that’s for sure, and especially financial ones.
Cobus: So, many of our listeners are undergrad students and graduate students, and many of them are moving into Africa-China studies for their masters’ dissertations and so on. So, just kind of a practical research, FOCAC-related research question for you, like so frequently when one reads the FOCAC declaration or the final communique, there’s these mentions of, oh, they’re going to embark on 10 joint peace and security projects, 10 joint green energy projects, 10 these projects, and so on and so on. Is there a way of finding, like ascertaining, which particular kind of FOCAC projects were embarked upon and how they went? I’ve been looking for those, and I’m sure they’re somewhere. But I was wondering like for people kind of moving into the field, how does one actually check whether something is an official FOCAC project and how it actually went?
Hannah: Yeah. Well, checking whether something is an official FOCAC project is one thing, however, and that’s very difficult to do, number one, because it won’t have a label on it or anything like that. And again, that has caused confusion with a lot of governments. You know, what’s FOCAC? What’s Belt and Road? What’s bilateral? What is… that does cause significant confusion. At the same time, something we’ve done, for instance, and there’s an example on our website of what we’ve called a climate action tracker. So, what we do is we have a team who look out for the different announcements, both in Chinese and English and French of different projects that have been announced, which might be relevant to some of the climate summit, climate declaration outcomes that were in FOCAC. So, we do that on a monthly basis, and so as a result, we’re able to really understand and be able to see, okay, well, these are the projects that might fall into this.
Now, the might is important because quite often, with these sorts of announcements, the funding source isn’t clear. And as I said, there’s no FOCAC label, but again, this is not unusual for China. There’s lots of other countries who have similar challenges. We won’t talk about Global Gateway. But the key point is if you know which ministry, for example, is expected to be responsible for that issue, you can look out for announcements from that ministry on their own websites and things. And you can also look at procurement notices, you can look at announcements in the media, but looking at Chinese media in particular is really crucial for it.
Geraud: To follow up what Cobus was saying, it’s really something quite, I wouldn’t say boring, but it’s interesting in the way that that level, that ability to track the realization of those projects, it really fit into the narrative of FOCAC being useful or not, or the China-Africa relation being useful or not. Because when you talk with different stakeholders coming from the West, the criticism comes; China talks a big numbers, but when you look closely, you don’t really find that much of realization on the ground. And when you speak to African stakeholders and you look at the numbers they’re providing, you compare that with the numbers coming out of China, you also see discrepancies which really kind of leave you with that feeling that, which is what? And really, at the end, where are we going? Is it a success or not at the end?
So, you say that it’s really difficult to track because there’s complexity at the end. So, if you being an expert of FOCAC and all, if someone comes and tell you, “I have the feeling that FOCAC was not really successful. China talks a big number and don’t really fulfill their commitment. The only numbers I get are coming from the debt issues and all those kind of issues.” What would be your reaction to such researcher or such person from civil society? Because those criticism comes a lot from civil society who are not part of the process, who some, most of the time, are not even integrated by the government into feeding the agenda of the FOCAC.
Hannah: Because this is a government-to-government process, I think it is a major issue for governments on all sides to be thinking about how to communicate and to monitor how things are going. There’s always been aspirations, for example, for a kind of monitoring mechanism on one side. And a monitoring mechanism from, for instance, the African Union may be well placed to do that. It would be well placed to do that from most of the Africa+1 summits for instance. And I think this is something, since there’s a monitoring mechanism on the Chinese side, there’s no reason why there would be any problem from the Chinese side with accepting a monitoring mechanism on the African side. But the key question will be, well, how to communicate that, how can a country like Kenya, for instance, there’s certain things that Kenya’s been able to leverage that wouldn’t have happened without FOCAC, no doubt.
And I think, I mean, that’s the counterfactual, isn’t it? But at the same time, Kenya hasn’t benefited from every single FOCAC program. Does that mean that FOCAC hasn’t been successful for Kenya? Absolutely not. But at the same time, it needs to be successful enough that Kenya can say it was worth us going and has been worth us putting this resource to engaging with it. I think that is the major question. And also, ideally, seeking some civil society input, some private sector input, some other, all ranges of input into what do we really want to get out of this process. What could we get next time, for instance? Probably, I don’t know if there’s enough time for governments to go and do that kind of consultation at this point, maybe they can, maybe they will, but even if they didn’t this time, perhaps next time, that could be something to do.
We’ve always said that ideally countries would have a China engagement strategy that they would make public. That would be the ideal. So that that’s something that they can kind of say, “Yes, this is where we see our relationship with China progressing.” As I said, most of them have China-specific desks as well as an embassy, who do know how these things go, but it’s putting the resource and that sort of political will and intentionality around it.
Eric: Well, Kenyan president William Ruto came back from the Belt and Road Forum last year and said he wants to create a document, a published document about the China strategy. So, it looks like there is some demand for that and, hopefully, we’ll start to see that. Germany has done that. A number of governments have a China strategy where they outline what they want to do. It’d be great to see that from some African governments. Since we’re running short on time and I do want to get to one last topic, you were in Nairobi in late March, and you gave a speech at a forum of G7 governments, representatives from G seven governments. You really read them the Riot Act. It was quite funny. This is great. Truth to power’s kind of speaking of the way it is. So, the title-
Hannah: Well, I was specifically asked to be provocative so I was, and then-
Eric: Well, you were. Mission accomplished.
Hannah: And I was provocative and then they suggested that I publish it. So I was like, okay, fine, I’ll do that. No problem. I don’t mind.
Eric: Well, fantastic. So let’s kind of lay it out here. So, the title of the speech was What is “the West” missing? Defining an affirmative agenda for engagement in Africa. I love that. And then you really took on their narratives about China. And I’m just going to read a few things. You can take this anywhere you go with it. “The idea that China’s extractive,” you said, “no partner is not extractive.” And that’s something we’ve talked about a lot on this show, about the dual standards that many western governments have. The suggestion that China is a bad lender. In fact, no partner gives the right kind of loans right now. China’s buying up land, so does everybody just in different guises. And China wants to use international rules to its advantages, so does everybody. Tell us about this, the reaction to the speech, and what you mean by an affirmative agenda?
Hannah: Yeah. Well, the reaction, as I said, was when you do give a provocative speech, you would expect some people to feel inspired and others to feel kind of also upset, which is fine. And I think if you get somewhere…
Eric: And What was the balance of the reaction? More inspired or more upset?
Hannah: You know, I can’t tell that because people are always going to be very, very complimentary. But what was great was that there were a lot of follow-up questions, and really in-depth questions that I felt the message had been kind of, okay, well, yeah, how do we address this? It was more a lot of how questions as opposed to, well, I don’t agree with this or that sort of thing. So that was great. And I think the point I really wanted to get across was it’s really important to center, we’re talking about engagement with Africa, which was the topic of the discussion, you know, how do you have engagement with African country? I think in that, it’s very important to center African needs and African responses. And you start from that perspective and then you go to what can you deliver, how can you respond, as opposed to this is what we can offer and this is better than this other partner.
What we can offer is better than this other partner, and the other partner is worse at X, Y, and Z than we are or we are better. The comparison of other partners is not particularly helpful in that context, at least at the beginning anyway. So, that’s what I was really trying to get across, and also encouraging G seven partners to really think you don’t have to respond if you are thinking about, if you look at how the relationship with China and African countries has gone, it doesn’t mean that you are going to have the same levers for engagement with Africa than China does. China’s using certain levers for engagement with Africa. That doesn’t mean you need to use the same ones. Actually, there’s many that China can’t necessarily use at this point in time, would love to use them probably, but they are still available to you to use, and you can actually do a lot more. So, I gave some examples around finance and trade, for example, in that speech. It’s really just about having a bit more of a sort of creative approach to engagement as opposed to just kind of looking at existing templates.
Eric: Well, we’ll see if you get invited back next year to speak again. That’ll be our ultimate tell. We’ll put a link to the speech in the show notes, and you guys can decide for yourselves, but it really was truth to power, and I’m really glad that you published it. Hannah, thank you so much again for all of your insights and your time and all the great work that you and the DR team are doing. We’ll put links to some of your research and, of course, to the speech, and also to some of the beautiful pictures from the retreat, the ambassador’s retreat. Really neat to see all these people coming together. And again, Wu Peng there, the Chinese were there, and it was just a really neat forum that you guys put on. So I know that’s not easy to do, so congratulations.
Hannah: The team worked very hard, and they were quite amazing at making sure-
Eric: Of course, it’s a lot of work to do that. A lot of work.
Hannah: Absolutely. Absolutely. We’re very proud of them.
Eric: So, once again, Hannah Ryder is the CEO of the international development consultancy, Development Reimagined, with offices in Nairobi, in Beijing, and in London. We want to thank you again, Hannah. We’ll talk to you again next year at this time.
Hannah: Look forward to that. Thank you, Eric, Cobus, and Geraud.
Eric: Guys, we’ve been talking to Hannah now, Cobus, again, I think it’s amazing, going well past a decade now. So, it’s really just so great to have this check-in with her every year on how things are coming. Literally, she and her team are in the room where it happens. Okay? I mean, there’s few people that are as close to both the Chinese side and the African side with the breadth of context that Development Reimagined has than they are. So, it’s really neat to be able to get those insights on where we are. I thought it was interesting that she said it’s still early in the process. I assume that they start the negotiations for the agenda about a year out. And the fact that we’re only about six months out now, potentially, from the FOCAC and it’s just getting started, that was something that surprised me.
Cobus, were you surprised in terms of the difficulties that they have in terms of tracking the effectiveness and the outcomes? And I find that surprising because we get grants from some of our funders, and they put very strict monitoring and evaluation guidelines to show that the money was used well and to show that it was effective and whatnot. And I’m just surprised when we’re talking about billions of dollars that there isn’t an equivalent type of demand for monitoring and evaluation to evaluate whether or not this was an effective use of money, whether things were done. And then obviously the Chinese aren’t huge on public disclosure, but that African democracies wouldn’t actually do more to do a little bit more disclosure. What’s your thought on that?
Cobus: Firstly, on the issue of how far on the process, I assume that a lot of the early negotiations that happened in the few months before already were setting broad agenda and touching on broad agenda categories, and that the real nitty-gritty comes relatively closer to the actual meeting, where more senior people get involved and some of actual decisions are made. So that’s, I assume, why it’s slightly early on. In terms of this monitoring evaluation thing, I think yes, I think that that’s a good point. Obviously, we’ve in the past have made very similar points about the need for radical transparency on the African side in relation to debt contracts. And I think this is a similar situation where because this is a government-to-government mechanism, governments have a tendency towards lack of transparency or towards secrecy. And I think that’s certainly true on the Chinese side and I think it’s very true on the African side too.
So, I definitely think there should be more kind of work done also to communicate actual gains to the populations, to be like, “Look, this is what actually followed through from this process.” I think that it would really help to kind of bring everyone on the same page. But yeah, as you say, it is notable that we don’t, for example, have a big list online of what constitutes a FOCAC project, for example. So, there is this interesting kind of blank space in the communication between things being announced and then actual implementation.
Eric: But then again, just to be fair, does TCAD do this? Did the U.S. Africa Leaders Summit do it? Did any of the Africa plus one summits have any accountability for anything that they do?
Cobus: That’s similar for many of them, yes.
Geraud: I really do believe it’s not really surprising because once you understand that there is also components of political communication behind that, you understand that no one would like to put itself in a situation where you can be blamed by saying that you fail your commitment. So, you want to leave it blurry enough so you can still spin the communication at the end when it comes to show that what was FOCAC or not. You can still take a small project somewhere done by small private companies and put it in your FOCAC list because in the FOCAC you mentioned that there’ll be much more private engagement. So, you can still spin off those elements together and say, “Okay, this is what I was able to achieve.” For me, it’s not really surprising. I was like, yeah, being a political organization, being much more a government-to-government initiative, I wouldn’t be surprised that on both side there was not much of a determination or willingness to really have a clear transparency on what is FOCAC and what is not FOCAC, just to allow each side to spin off the communication about that the messaging around that.
Cobus: I think there’s an aspect there that reflects the uniqueness of China’s particular engagement with Africa in the sense that official development assistance is a much smaller part of Chinese formal engagement with Africa than Japan’s, for example, or Europe’s. And in the case of ODA, that is public money that has to be accounted for in some kind of way. In the case of Chinese projects, there’s more the kind of facilitation of other forms of investment. It’s a kind of a more complicated mix of things.
Eric: Yeah, but policy bank money is public money policy bank money is public money. China EXIM Bank, China Development Bank.
Cobus: That’s true, that’s true. But it is a run through state-owned enterprises rather than being directly paid government-to-government.
Eric: Which also is technically public money.
Cobus: Exactly. State-owned enterprises are technically public money, but they still are also independent corporate entity in their particular Chinese way. So there, I think there’s another set of architectures that complicate the mix, I think.
Eric: Well, I think this year is going to be very different than previous years because this is really going to be the first year that they’re having a FOCAC when China is in structural economic adjustment period. I mean, the Chinese economy today is radically different than what it was five, 10, 15 years ago. And the days of these big dollar pledges may be over. That being said, the Belt and Road Forum, they committed a hundred billion dollars. We found out later that most of that money will be spent domestically in China. Also, one has to take into account that Xi Jinping, though he has a lot more sway in the Chinese political space than a democratic leader in the West or in Japan does, he too faces domestic political pressures. And there is not a lot of appetite to be giving Africans tens of billions of dollars inside the Chinese body politic, especially right now when times are quite difficult.
Youth unemployment is high. We can go through any number of statistics that show that China is going through a transition stage in its economic growth from the rapid growth to the more mature development where 4%, 5%, 6% is considered great. That just puts a lot more pressures on the Chinese pocketbook. I really wonder what the reaction is going to be when African leaders will go home with potentially much lighter pockets than they did in the past. Geraud, what do you think?
Geraud: That was one of the question I was asking myself a few weeks back when I wrote about the FOCAC on how China intends to approach this FOCAC under the new BRI 2.0. Because let’s face it, for many African countries, China was the go-to country where Western country were not coming. When the IMFA World Bank was shutting everything down in Africa, China was the option. If now China goes back to the approach of saying, “I’m not giving that much money, I’m also worried about your financial sustainability, your ability to pay back my loan,” I kind of wonder what would be Africa’s position on that? Would I be much more excited to go? And this is why I think we should pay attention to the attendance. This time is a summit. So, let’s count how many head of state will be really present because it can…
Eric: Okay. How many do you think are going to go? Out of 55.
Geraud: Out of 53?
Eric: Well, again, 55, 54. We know Eswatini will not go. Okay? Take Eswatini off. How many do you think will go?
Geraud: I bet my money 25. 25 to 30.
Eric: What? Cobus, what’s your number? What do you think?
Cobus: Yes, also roughly the same. I think 25 to 30 I think.
Eric: Oh no, I think you guys are way too low. FOCAC always gets more African leaders than even the UN General Assembly meetings. It is a record. I think we’re going to see upwards of 40 to 45.
Geraud: That would be a huge diplomatic victory for China.
Eric: It always is a huge number. It always is a huge number. Now, at the Belt and Road Forum, they didn’t get very many to come.
Geraud: Yeah, true, true. This is why I say anticipating all the element that you mentioned, no money coming, no expectation that maybe I’m going to get $3, $4 billion out of this summit and everything, what do you think that the head of state will be, where the mind will be at. It’ll be like, “I can send my prime minister. Why would I be going there if I’m not expecting to get as high as I would want to get?”
Eric: I’m just trying to see if we can get a number on how many heads of state went to the 2015? That was a summit is the last one I’m looking at. I’m trying to figure out. No, I can’t get the number quickly on it, but it was very high. It was very, very high. I have a feeling it’s going to stay high because I think that there is more promise of getting tangible outcomes from the Chinese than from the others. I mean, quite a few went to the U.S.-Africa summit too. I mean, that was a very high number as well.
Cobus: I think the geopolitics of the moment will make more of them go in the sense that go to both sides. Kind of there’ll be an echo of more attendance on Western to Western of these kind of gatherings and to FOCAC, I think. Because they need to keep all of the sides friendly, I think, in these geopolitical moments. Yeah.
Geraud: Exactly. Just to show that we are not picking side, you know. We are not picking side. We are both coming and everything. We still have to wait for the next Western plus one Africa summit. So Yeah.
Eric: Well, I just want to bring one last point up. When we look at the China Africa trade relationship, and Hannah said trade was going to be a major part of this, this is a highly distorted trade relationship. The Chinese like to talk about how China-Africa trade, I forget the number, 172, is that what the number is? 172 billion, something like that. But what they don’t really kind of emphasize is where is that trade. And it turns out that about 60% to 70% of the Chinese exports to Africa go to five countries, the big ones you would expect — Nigeria, Ethiopia, into South Africa. And then the exports from Africa are concentrated, also 60% to 70%, from just a handful of countries. Angola being one, the DRC — Geraud your country — South Africa as well.
Those together account for I think 62% of all exports. Again, highly distorted relationship. What that means is that 50 other countries don’t have a very healthy trade relationship with China.
And then there was an interesting statistic that came out of Boston University’s China Africa Economic Bulletin, the 2024 edition that the fantastic team at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center put together. It surprised me. They looked back on trade from 2000 to 2022, and they calculated that 89% of Africa’s exports to China were in the extractive sector. And that is a rather depressing number in the sense that in many respects, that is the dynamic that Africa has been in for centuries. And so, in many respects when China talks about that it is a different kind of partner for Africa, at least when it comes to trade, that profile looks very similar to what it’s looked like for the past 500 years. Cobus, what do you think?
Cobus: Well, I think it reflects a point that Hannah was making in her G7 speech is that no matter what kind of partner you are to Africa, Africa also occupies a certain kind of structural position in the global economy. And I’ve in the past joked that Africa’s position in the global economy is essentially the place in your backyard where you leave an old car that doesn’t run anymore. So, it’s not your front garden. I think Africa has for ever been… its position in the world has been defined by extractive. And it’s difficult to break that pattern. I think particularly also difficult to break that pattern if you’re not getting very proactive and innovative, cooperation from the African side, which, in some cases, some African countries you, are and in other African countries, not so much.
For example, I was very snarky today in our newsletter about a call by Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda, for greater access to Chinese markets, where I was like, China in 2022 already gave tariff-free entry to 98% of Ugandan products. So, where are we now? Why isn’t 2024 still that same call being made that it also made in 2021 when, in the intervening time, there’s been a huge kind of cut in tariffs to the Chinese market? Like, has that not provided additional access for Uganda? What is the situation? I feel that there’s huge missed opportunities because many African countries have unique products, particularly on the agricultural side, they have potentially amazing things that they can process and sell to China.
But I think a lot of these countries they’re in an extractive industry mineral and oil tunnel vision. Like Uganda itself is busy building a complete environmentally ruinous oil pipeline. And I think in a lot of cases, this also reflect a breakdown of imagination on the case of some African policy-makers and, with that, not the work being done to set up the infrastructure that it would take to actually diversify trade. But maybe I’m being kind of unfairly critical.
Eric: Well, I think Geraud is probably going to say the same thing because given the fact that Geraud, you come from a country that is really the case study, the best example of the extractives is the DR Congo.
Geraud: Exactly, yeah. When you look at the numbers, when you look at the profile of what DRC exported to China in 2023, 99% of them was natural resources and the bulk of them was cobalt and copper. And it just tells you how much natural resources, minerals are the center of export of many African countries. And when you look at the top five African country, the top five, big countries of China-Africa trade, except for South Africa, which has a very diverse portfolio in its trading with China, with the surplus of his trade balance with China, the rest of us like Ghana, DRC, and Ethiopia, most of us, and even Egypt, most of us, it’s much more natural resource than anything else. And I do believe that it’s really stemmed from just our inability to diversify our economies. And as Cobus was saying, Uganda’s been complaining, “We want much more access.”
You have 98% free tariff on most of your export to China, but what have you done with that? When you look at the numbers from Uganda, same thing — natural resources, not much of manufacture product. And just to be fair, so for people to understand, this is the place, and as Cobus said, the structural place that Africa is occupying in international trade in many respects. Even with the U.S., even with Europe, when you look at our profile, it’s the same thing. I think there is a lot that needs to be done in terms of industrialization internally, what we want to do, what’s the place we want to occupy, what space we want to occupy. Even now, when you talk about value chain, we talk about value chain and supply chain, we talk about them in the space of critical minerals.
We still remain in that space where we are natural resource-focused, economy and driven. We are not thinking about, okay, let’s move out of those natural resource spaces, let’s move into manufacture, let’s move into service. What to change, what policy we should be putting in place to be able to trade differently with other parts of the world? We are not in that space. We still want to remain in the space where natural resource are the center because maybe, because just maybe they provide a lot, much more money that regime needs in Africa to stay in power.
Eric: Okay. Well, we’re going to give you the final word today. Thank you, Geraud. Thank you, Cobus. We’re going to be talking about FOCAC now right through to the summit. Again, we don’t know exactly when the summit is. They usually reveal it sometimes as late as one week before. And there’s all these rumors that come out. It’s really one of the best kept secrets in all of the world. Hard to believe, in this day and age, you can keep secrets like that. But they do a pretty good job. We don’t think it’s going to be in the month of October, because that is when they have Golden Week in China, which is a 10-day holiday. That’s their national day holiday. People are checked out for the first two weeks of the month, and then the second two weeks, they’re catching up. Unlikely that it’s going to be then. We hear rumors, by the way, that it might be in September before Golden Week.
And then also other rumors that it might be in October. Last time it was in December. So again, we just don’t know. We’re kind of banking on the fact that it’s going to be earlier than later. So, we’re getting ready with a whole bunch of resources on the site pretty soon. So, starting in the spring, you’re going to see these great backgrounders and we’re going to put a lot of information, probably put a link to this podcast as well because it’s great to have Hannah and her team be part of this as well. So, look for that on the site. And again, all of this work is being done by the team, by Geraud, by Cobus, by Jony, by Antonia in Jakarta, and it requires your support, and we really, really depend on your support. We want to thank her Patreon supporters. If you want to support us, go find us on Patreon @ChinaGlobalSouth.
Also, the best way to support us is to subscribe. Go to chinaglobalsouth.com/subscribe. We’ve made subscriptions very affordable in order to have the widest audience possible. We hope that you’ll give it a try. We’ll give you 30 days for free. And if you are a student or a teacher, you get half off. Just email me using your academic address, eric@chinaglobalsouth.com, and I will send you the links for the 50% discount subscriptions. So, that’ll do it for Geraud, Cobus, and myself. We’ll be back again next week with another edition of the China in Africa Podcast. Until then, thank you so much for listening.
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