C.32: Marginalisation, Globalisation, Regional and Local Responses: New geographies of China in Africa: changing economic, social and geopolitical engagements 1

China’s increased engagements in Africa over the past two decades have been as notable as they have been controversial. However, has its engagement and influence on the continent now peaked? Recently some have predicted China’s economic stagnation as a result of issues such as debt, supply chain shortening consequent to COVID, trade wars, the impact of strict lockdowns in that country, and excessive and inappropriate regulation amongst other issues. Chinese lending to Africa has also now peaked and is in precipitous decline, as are some other economic indicators. Other powers are now also vigorously contesting for “space” on the continent, with some potential setbacks for China resulting from this. This paper examines whether or not we are now in a period “post-peak China in Africa” as a result of the concatenation of these factors and the reconfiguration of its strategies of influence through a Zambian case study. This will have important implications for future politics and development on the continent. 

In 2017, China officially launched the Digital Silk Road (DSR), a part of the New Silk Roads (NSR), to strengthen trade and diplomatic exchanges between China and countries in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.

The DSR aims to improve the Internet connections with partner countries. The physical infrastructure through which the data flows is sold by China as a tool to boost traditional local economic sectors and as a means to create activities related to the digital economy. China is interested in selling the expertise of its equipment manufacturers in the digital sector and using it to reinforce its links with the countries of the South. This conquest is taking place against the backdrop of increased competition between the United States and China since the Huawei ban in 2019, with important issues of data security and sovereignty at stake. What are the consequences of this competition for the continent's digital development? Has it become a new lever of influence for China and a negotiating tool for African countries ?

This presentation will show that Huawei's presence in Africa precedes China's grand strategy of DSR, but that China is relying on Huawei's market conquests to strengthen its cooperation with African countries and promote its development success. The significant evolution of Huawei's partnerships with private players to partnerships with governments is changing the flow and exchange of data within and outside the continent. Finally, beyond the sale of digital infrastructure, China is exporting new models of governance and development to Africa through Huawei.

Augustin Formoso et al., « Deep diving into Africa’s Inter-Country Latencies », IEEE Infocom 2018, avril 2018. 

Conseil des affaires de l’État de la République populaire de Chine, Action plan on the Belt and Road Initiative, 30 mai 2015.

Frédérick Douzet, « L’expansion de la puissance chinoise dans le cyberespace », Revue Défense Nationale, 2018, p. 12.

Heng Wang, « The belt and road initiative agreements: characteristics, rationale, and challenges », World Trade Review, Janvier 2021, p. 1-24.

Iginio Gagliardone, China, Africa, and the Future of the Internet, Zed Books Ltd, London, 2019, 187 p.

Jing Cheng, Jinghan Zeng, « 'Digital Silk Road’ as a Slogan Instead of a Grand Strategy », Journal of Contemporary China, juin 2023.

Kavé Salamatian, « Trump contre Huawei : enjeux géopolitiques de la 5G » Hérodote, n° 177-178, 197-213.

Ministère [chinois] des Affaires étrangères, High-Quality Belt and Road Cooperation: Partnership on Connectivity, 2021, p. 10

Motolani Agbebi, « China’s Digital Silk Road and Africa’s Technological Future », Council on Foreign Relations, p. 1.

Nigel Inkster, « The Huawei Affair and China's Technology Ambitions », Survival, 2019, 61(1), p.108.

The geopolitical, financial, ideational, and infrastructural dimensions and manifestations of China’s engagements in Africa have been well documented since the 2006 Beijing Summit launched a new era of aid, trade, and investment relations.  The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been a key program to foster these relations, one studied extensively.  Beyond the BRI, there other vectors through which China is engaging with economies in the region.  These include the diffusion of regulatory standards related to information-communication technologies and other sectors, flows of imports into African markets, knowledge and other innovation-related transfers (e.g., human capital, industry spillovers), and movements of people (e.g., workers, entrepreneurs) from China into the region.  Taken together, these heterogenous and spatially/organizationally diffuse engagements, along with the centralized relations of the BRI, constitute what we conceptualize as “webpower” – a dynamic of uneven, contingent, and diverse forms of China-Africa integration across the continent.  How, where, and to what degree such engagements/integrations are occurring, and with what impacts, depends on how Chinese-driven vectors – industrial, infrastructural, financial, and regulatory – articulate or align with variegations of (state) capitalism in Africa.  A key point being that such variegations force webpower to (implicitly) operate pragmatically, recursively, and contingently in response to them and that this, consequently, creates geographically uneven Sino-African alignments and development outcomes in Africa.  This paper develops this framework, illustrates it through examples from East Africa, and calls for a robust, comparative, and Pan-African research agenda to determine what Chinese webpower means for African futures and its development geographies.