Home ›› 16 Feb 2023 ›› Opinion
Visiting African countries in January 2023, top Chinese and United States officials were eager to make one big point; we are not competing to control Africa.
China’s new foreign minister Qin Gang told reporters in Ethiopia during his five-country tour that Africa was not a battleground for influence.
“Africa should be a big stage for international cooperation, not an arena for major-force rivalry,” Qin said in Addis Ababa, where he cut ribbons at the new China-built headquarters of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Kicking off her own tour of Africa, Janet Yellen, the U.S. Secretary of Treasury, also tried to convince her hosts that she was not here to compete. “This is not competition with China — we want to deepen our engagement with Africa,” Yellen said.
But the Africa visits came as the rivalries escalate between China and the US over the Ukraine war and for control of commodity supplies. There is no doubt that the race to win Africa over is on. What is in doubt, however, is whether African governments themselves are ready to gain from it.
Yellen touched down in Zambia just a day before Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, arrived in South Africa to start his own visit to the continent. On the day that Yellen arrived in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, she couldn’t have missed the signs of Chinese influence. Hours after her arrival, a bell chimed to mark the Chinese New Year at the city’s Shaolin Temple Cultural Centre, another sign of Chinese presence.
Yellen’s trip was the first of what will be a series of high-level U.S. visits to Africa this year by President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, trade representative Katherine Tai, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
China, on the other hand, is trying to stay a step ahead of the U.S. Qin’s visit is a continued 33-year-old tradition of Chinese foreign ministers making Africa their first foreign destination each year. While the U.S. for years stuck to its old channels of cooperation – aid and security – China grew its trade with Africa four times that of the US.
Now, the geopolitical battles sparked by the Ukraine war, and the economic battle to secure the commodities crucial to energy supply, are playing out in Africa. One such battlefield is in the battery metals mineral resources of Southern Africa.
In December, the U.S. signed an agreement with Zambia and its northern neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo, to mine cobalt in the Congo, which accounts for 70% of the world’s supply of the battery mineral, and copper in Zambia, one of the world’s largest copper producers.
Next door to Zambia, in Zimbabwe, three large Chinese lithium miners – Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, Chengxin and Sinomine – are investing in new processing plants, worth over $600 million combined. China currently controls the bulk of the battery supply chain, from lithium processing to batteries, a grip that the US is working hard to loosen. It’s a war that will also be fought in Africa.
What African countries want most are large investments that can get off the ground quickly. At the U.S. Africa Leadership Summit in Washington, the U.S. pledged $55 billion in investment for Africa. While China pledged $40 billion at the 2021 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the U.S. package includes existing pledges, and depends on approval from the U.S. Congress within the next two years.
China has less of that red tape. The U.S. Africa Summit pledged to invest over $350 million into technology for all of Africa. In comparison, in Angola, Qin oversaw the signing of a broadband rollout deal worth $249 million – for Angola alone. He also toured Huawei’s new $80 million technology park in the capital, Luanda. Many African leaders want similar deals of their own.
It is a race for resources and political influence, in the shadows of the Ukraine war. What more can Africa get out of all this?
As Alexander Rusero, Research Fellow with the Institute for Pan African Thought at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, told Politics Today, “The visits have nothing to do with Africa nor the African states, but everything to do with the Global North states who cannot navigate against the tide, be it war, be it food supply or energy supply, without Africa in the equation.”
The trick now, for African economies, is to get what they can. Sadly, for Africa, its leaders have historically negotiated from weakness, giving away far too much and gaining little. Now, for a change, Africa has some leverage.
Politically, the rivalries give Africa bargaining power in its campaign for United Nations Security Council reforms. Economically, there are opportunities for better long-term investment.
Politics Today
