$50 billion, a million jobs and a red carpet welcome: China woos Africa as U.S. struggles to keep up

BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged more than $50 billion in funding and at least 1 million jobs for Africa at a summit in Beijing on Thursday as the United States and China compete for influence in the fast-growing continent.

More than 50 leaders of African nations are in the Chinese capital this week for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, a summit held every three years that alternates between China and Africa.

China has been pulling out all the stops for the visiting dignitaries, with the flags of African nations flying around Tiananmen Square and multiple honor guards, red carpet ceremonies and performances being held for what China has called its most important diplomatic event since it emerged from three years of pandemic isolation. Banners and billboards around the city bear slogans celebrating “A Shared Future for China and Africa.”

Xi promised nearly $51 billion over the next three years, including $30 billion in credit lines, $10 billion in investment by Chinese companies and other amounts including military aid, as he vowed mutual cooperation with Africa to achieve “modernization.”

“Modernization is an inalienable right of all countries,” he said in a speech at the summit on Thursday. “But the Western approach to it has inflicted immense sufferings on developing countries.”

Xi also proposed that bilateral relations with all African countries that have diplomatic ties with China be upgraded to the “strategic” level, saying “the China-Africa relationship is now at its best in history.”

The forum, which began in 2000, is an opportunity for China to strengthen its influence in Africa as it seeks to challenge the U.S.-led global order and revive a slowing economy at home. It includes every African state except Eswatini, which is one of the 12 remaining governments in the world that maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy that Beijing claims as its territory.

“For China, it is about the reform of the international system in a way that is favorable to its interests,” said Alex Vines, director of the Africa program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. “And China should be credited for shaking the West out of its complacency related to its partnerships on the African continent.”

With its rapidly growing population of 1.5 billion people and abundant natural resources, Africa is strategically important to the U.S. and other global powers. But the continent has also felt neglected by the leading economies as it struggles with poverty, climate change and geopolitical unrest.

“These challenges affect all nations,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Thursday in remarks after Xi’s speech, “but are more often severely felt on the African continent.”

Senegal President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, the forum’s co-chair, applauded China’s long commitment to Africa’s development.

“The volume of trade has grown,” he said, adding that China was the first to provide Africa with masks and vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic and has helped African health authorities to better cope with diseases in general.

African leaders are not without complaints in their dealings with China, however, with many of them expressing a desire for a more balanced relationship. They have also not forgotten China’s unfulfilled pledge from the last summit in 2021 to buy $300 billion in African goods.

“We would like to narrow the trade deficit and address the structure of our trade,” Ramaphosa told Xi during bilateral talks earlier this week, according to a transcript of the meeting released by Ramaphosa’s office. 

To that end, Xi said Thursday that China would further open its market to African agricultural products, and that products from most of the world’s poorest countries, including 33 in Africa, would be exempted from all tariffs.

Xi said China would carry out 30 infrastructure projects across the continent as part of his Belt and Road initiative, which has been criticized as saddling countries with debt.

But China also appears to be shifting away from such megaprojects, as Xi promoted 1,000 “small and beautiful” projects across Africa such as street lights in Addis Ababa that have transformed the Ethiopian capital’s nighttime skyline.

“The big-ticket infrastructure projects that it had invested in got overexposed. They were bad loans,” Vines said. “But the new Chinese relationship is more clinical and strategic in that regard.”

China, a world leader in green technologies, is also looking to Africa as a potential market for its exports as they face growing curbs in the U.S. and elsewhere.

China, which overtook the U.S. as Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009, has been intensifying its overtures toward the continent, approving $4.61 billion in loans last year in the first annual increase since 2016. Xi also met with multiple African leaders last year when he attended a summit in South Africa of the bloc of developing countries known as BRICS.

While President Joe Biden has emphasized Africa’s importance for global issues and hosted Kenyan President William Ruto for an official state visit earlier this year, he has not visited the continent since taking office in 2021.

“Everything starts with one step, and China is extending its hand,” said Abra Kafui Tsolenyanu, a journalist attending the summit from the West African nation of Togo.

“So, like all other countries, Togo started to walk toward China.”

Janis Mackey Frayer reported from Beijing, and Mithil Aggarwal reported from Hong Kong.