China-Africa summit 2024: What’s in it for Beijing, and for Africa? | Worldwide Commerce Information

African leaders are converging in China this week for an anticipated high-level assembly with President Xi Jinping as Beijing continues to befriend and develop its affect on the continent amid a silent face-off with Western international locations.

The China-Africa summit, which is able to final from September 4 to six, will see leaders of African international locations meet and talk about insurance policies and cooperation agreements with officers from the continent’s largest lender and investor. These agreements will set the tone for the 2 facet’s burgeoning relations for the following few years.

In a assertion, China’s Ministry of Overseas Affairs mentioned the convention is the “largest diplomatic occasion” the nation has hosted in recent times with the best attendance of overseas leaders, including that it was a “grand reunion of the China-Africa large household”.

Agreements in previous summits have unlocked unrivalled entry to Africa’s uncooked materials markets for Beijing, in addition to funding {dollars} for African international locations.

“China shall by no means waver in its dedication to pursue better solidarity and cooperation with Africa,” the assertion added.

Right here’s all that you must learn about what’s deliberate for the 2024 summit, who will probably be there, and the place China is already investing in Africa:

What’s the summit about?

The China-Africa summit, formally known as the Discussion board on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), has been held each three years since 2000. The newest convention would be the ninth such assembly.

The conferences and eventual offers will revolve across the themes of industrialisation, agricultural developments, safety, and cooperation relating to China’s Belt and Street initiative – a large challenge aiming to hyperlink a number of continents to China with bodily infrastructure.

In line with China’s overseas ministry, the official summit theme is “Becoming a member of Arms to Advance Modernisation and Construct a Excessive-Stage China-Africa Neighborhood with a Shared Future”.

Beijing is anticipated to fete its high-level friends at a welcoming banquet, a separate opening ceremony, 4 basic summits, and a number of other bilateral conferences with China’s Xi and completely different African leaders.

The summit comes at a time when China is more and more countering United States and European affect in Africa and different growing areas in its climb to world superpower standing. Though the US, Japan, India and Russia additionally maintain common summits to woo the continent’s leaders, China is unmatched because the continent’s financial associate.

For Beijing, the summit presents a large diplomatic alternative to flaunt its prominence on the world stage, mentioned Jana de Kluiver, a researcher with the South Africa-based Institute for Safety Research. Having African leaders as allies means Beijing can wield diplomatic affect on the United Nations.

“Africa is essential to China due to the energy of its votes on the United Nations Normal Meeting. These pictures with African leaders, these large headlines on the papers, will probably be crucial for President Xi to get,” de Kluiver mentioned.

On the enterprise entrance, China can be anticipated to woo African leaders with extra funding {dollars} and foyer for improved entry to essential minerals like lithium, copper and cobalt, which it at present mines within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Zimbabwe, Botswana, and different international locations.

Beijing may even possible push for extra exports of its China-made merchandise, significantly renewable power merchandise, and applied sciences it has just lately invested closely in.

African international locations, which frequently make offers bilaterally, will alternatively look to make clear plans for some unfulfilled pledges from previous summits.

Some, just like the DRC, may even be in search of extra cooperation that can guarantee Chinese language corporations refine the uncooked supplies they mine within the nation. That strategy will yield extra income for these international locations whereas offering extra job alternatives for Africa’s younger staff.

Who will attend?

Not less than 53 heads of state of African international locations, or their representatives, in addition to ministerial delegates, are anticipated to be on the summit.

Eswatini, the 54th African nation, has no ties with China and is more likely to be the one absent nation. It’s the solely African nation that has diplomatic ties with Taiwan, which China claims as a part of its territory.

President Xi met with DRC’s President Felix Tshisekedi this week. Xi additionally met with the leaders of Togo, Mali, Comoros, and Djibouti, in line with native information studies. On Tuesday, Xi additionally met President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria, Africa’s largest financial system.

UN Secretary-Normal Antonio Guterres will probably be a particular visitor on the summit. A number of worldwide and regional organisations may even attend the assembly as observers.

The place has China invested in Africa?

China is Africa’s largest commerce associate. Round a quarter of the continent’s exports – principally minerals, fuels and metals – go to China, and about 16 p.c of imports come from the nation. China says annual commerce quantity may attain $300bn by 2035.

Beijing can be the continent’s largest creditor. Between 2006 and 2021, it dedicated to investing $191bn in African international locations.

In lots of instances, these investments take the type of grants, credit score, and loans to finance main infrastructural tasks.

About $155bn value of promised loans till 2021 seem to have been carried out, de Kluiver famous in a examine. Nevertheless, the researcher added, it’s onerous to color an entire image due to a “lack of transparency” relating to Chinese language financing.

In 2021, over the past summit in Senegal, China once more promised to speculate $40bn collectively in African international locations.

Chinese language overseas direct funding in Africa has surpassed that of the US for over a decade, in line with analysts on the China-Africa Analysis Initiative at John Hopkins College.

Are China-Africa relations controversial?

Chinese language investments have been met with resistance on the native stage in lots of international locations, particularly relating to environmental points.

Final week, as an example, activists in Uganda protested and marched to the Chinese language embassy in Kampala over an oil pipeline challenge that can switch crude from the nation to neighbouring Tanzania. The pipeline will probably be operated by a Chinese language-state agency in collaboration with French power and petroleum firm Whole, as effectively the Tanzanian and Ugandan governments. It’s set to be the longest heated oil pipeline on the planet. Nevertheless, communities say it should displace 1000’s of individuals and destroy the atmosphere.

China has individually confronted criticism for failing to cease unsustainable practices comparable to unlawful logging in a number of African international locations that contribute to the market in China. The US-based Environmental Investigation Company in a Might 2024 report discovered that unlawful timber transports from Mozambique to China have surged since 2017. The funds had been going to armed teams, contributing to an insurgency within the nation, the examine mentioned.

As well as, China’s critics accuse Beijing of luring African international locations into important mortgage agreements that they wrestle to pay again – permitting Beijing to then seize profitable property – a follow some tag “debt diplomacy”.

Some international locations like Zambia have defaulted on loans. By the top of 2022, Zambia amassed greater than $18bn in exterior debt, with at the very least 12 p.c of that owed to China, the nation’s largest bilateral creditor. In March, Lusaka reached a restructuring settlement with China and different collectors that noticed about $840m of the claims written off. 

China has repeatedly rejected the notion that it’s attempting to entrap nations — in Africa and elsewhere — utilizing debt. The “debt lure” principle has additionally been challenged by some specialists who say Chinese language investments are too plentiful and too fragmented for the nation to have a deliberate “debt technique”.