China is Africa's preferred external partner, experts say

The just-concluded 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation demonstrated that China recognized the importance of Africa "many years ago" and continues to be the continent's important external partner, with the relationship maturing and developing, according to experts.

"I think that the FOCAC summit that's just happened in Beijing is really important," Alex Vines, the director of the Africa Programme at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, told China Daily.

China obviously occupies an important role as an external partner in Africa's development path, and the depth and detail of the FOCAC Action Plan suggest that matters will remain that way, Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies, told China Daily.

The Sept 4-6 summit in Beijing was the largest gathering of African and Chinese leaders since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

President Xi Jinping held bilateral meetings with some of the African leaders on the sidelines of the summit.

Vines said the African countries also demonstrated their interest in engagement with Beijing as 53 representatives of the continent's nations attended the summit.

African votes make up 25 percent of the United Nations General Assembly, which opened on Tuesday in New York, so "African thinking is important for the international system", Vines said.

Gupta said China understands Africa better than countries in the Global North.

"China has a lived experience of being a developing country, while others substitute their thinking of Africa's needs in place of the thinking and wishes of the African people themselves," he said. "China sees Africa through African lenses better than countries in the Global North, which is also the reason it is Africa's preferred external partner."

Continent needs growth

Vines said Africa needs economic growth, and the first phase of Chinese investment was in big infrastructure projects.

"We also now see a lot more emphasis by China on agriculture, health and kind of value-addition, even how (to) create more industry in Africa. And I think we'll see this as part of the green economy strategy," he said.

"So I can see a scenario where electric vehicles are manufactured and assembled in Africa, for example, in the future."

Vines said that China is still investing in African ports and transport corridors.

He also mentioned the Global Security Initiative China proposed in 2022.

The initiative stresses the importance of mutual security, he said. "And given that there are real security challenges in a number of areas of Africa at the moment", the "engagement and partnership of China" is a key to that effort.

Vines noticed that one of the 10 partnership action plans unveiled at the FOCAC summit is "the Partnership Action for Mutual Learning among Civilizations", and China will invite 1,000 members of African political parties to the country to deepen exchanges of experience in party and state governance.

"So, the relationship between China and Africa is maturing, and it is changing. And, of course, at the end of the day, there are different African engagements with China. Some are bilateral with particular countries, some are regional and some are continental," Vines said.

On the other hand, he said that African countries are facing more choices, and they do not want to pick a side between, for example, China and the West.

"They want their choice defined by what their interests are. Of course, the world, global systems, and global governance systems will need to adapt. They need to be reformed to accommodate multipolarity," he said.

"I think that Americans will need to understand that actually the world is multipolar now, and that there will and need to be areas where even the United States can cooperate with China," Vines said.