Context

• Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged $51 billion of funding to African countries at the ninth edition of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing.

2024 FOCAC significant?

• The summit comes at a time when China is experiencing a prolonged economic slowdown post-pandemic
• China’s growth target for the year looks increasingly out of reach as its manufacturers battle deflationary pressures and unemployment challenges.
• There are also concerns about loan defaults: Zambia and Ghana
• President Xi Jinping wishes to narrow the country’s investment portfolio away from big-ticket infrastructure to “small and beautiful projects.
• African partners, however, are expected to seek more lending.
• Kenya is seeking funding for multiple infrastructure projects including the completion of the transnational Standard Gauge Railway to Uganda, which China discontinued in 2020.
• Another concern from countries like South Africa is the balance of trade being in China’s favour.

What is the FOCAC?

• The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was established in 2000 to formalise the strategic partnership between China and African nations.
• A summit is conducted every three years, with the host alternating between China and an African member.
• The FOCAC counts 53 African nations as its members – the entire continent except Eswatini, which has diplomatic ties with Taiwan against Beijing’s “One China” Policy.
• The African Union Commission, the continental bloc tasked with ensuring cooperation and economic integration across its member countries, is also a member.
• African leaders will engage in bilateral talks with China on political and economic cooperation over three days.
• The theme this year is “Joining Hands to Advance Modernization and Build a High-Level China-Africa Community with a Shared Future.”
• FOCAC will be the largest diplomatic event China has hosted in recent years and have UN Secretary-General António Guterres as a special guest.
• The last FOCAC summit was held virtually in Beijing and Dakar, Senegal in 2021, owing to Covid-19 restrictions.

How have China’s relations with Africa evolved?

• As a Communist nation, China stood for the decolonisation of multiple African countries in the 1950s by supporting their liberation movements and establishing bilateral trade relations.
• These efforts paid off in the 1970s, as China rallied the support of these nations to displace Taiwan as the official representative of China in global forums like the UN Security Council.
• The transnational Tanzania-Zambia railway, completed in 1976, was China’s first infrastructure project in Africa.
• China become Africa’s largest bilateral trading partner since 2009.
• Africa-China trade amounted to $282 billion in 2023, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
• China gets 20% of the region’s exports, mainly primary commodities like metals, mineral products and fuel, and is responsible for about 16% of African imports, chiefly Chinese manufactured goods, electronics and machinery.
• Africa is also an integral partner in the BRI.
• A big draw for African nations seeking Chinese funds has been the absence of constraints linked to environmental or human rights protections, characteristic of loans from the IMF and the World Bank.
• The US investments in Africa have also not kept pace with China in recent years.
• China has been accused of using the BRI to foster ‘debt trap diplomacy’.
• China’s financing policy is too fragmented and vast to pursue a concerted debt-financing strategy.

Source: IE

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