African leaders are converging in China this week for an anticipated high-level meeting with President Xi Jinping as Beijing continues to befriend and expand its influence on the continent amid a silent face-off with Western countries.
The China-Africa summit, which will last from September 4 to 6, will see leaders of African countries meet and discuss policies and cooperation agreements with officials from the continent’s biggest lender and investor. Those agreements will set the tone for the two side’s burgeoning relations for the next few years.
In a statement, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the conference is the “largest diplomatic event” the country has hosted in recent years with the highest attendance of foreign leaders, adding that it was a “grand reunion of the China-Africa big family”.
Agreements in past summits have unlocked unrivalled access to Africa’s raw material markets for Beijing, as well as investment dollars for African countries.
“China shall never waver in its determination to pursue greater solidarity and cooperation with Africa,” the statement added.
Here’s all you need to know about what’s planned for the 2024 summit, who will be there, and where China is already investing in Africa:
What’s the summit about?
The China-Africa summit, officially called the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), has been held every three years since 2000. The latest conference will be the ninth such meeting.
The meetings and eventual deals will revolve around the themes of industrialisation, agricultural advancements, security, and cooperation regarding China’s Belt and Road initiative – a massive project aiming to link several continents to China with physical infrastructure.
According to China’s foreign ministry, the official summit theme is “Joining Hands to Advance Modernisation and Build a High-Level China-Africa Community with a Shared Future”.
Beijing is expected to fete its high-level guests at a welcoming banquet, a separate opening ceremony, four general summits, and several bilateral meetings with China’s Xi and different African leaders.
The summit comes at a time when China is increasingly countering United States and European influence in Africa and other developing regions in its climb to global superpower status. Although the US, Japan, India and Russia also hold regular summits to woo the continent’s leaders, China is unmatched as the continent’s economic partner.
For Beijing, the summit presents a massive diplomatic opportunity to flaunt its prominence on the world stage, said Jana de Kluiver, a researcher with the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies. Having African leaders as allies means Beijing can wield diplomatic influence at the United Nations.
“Africa is important to China because of the strength of its votes at the United Nations General Assembly. Those photos with African leaders, those big headlines on the papers, will be very important for President Xi to get,” de Kluiver said.
On the business front, China is also expected to woo African leaders with more investment dollars and lobby for improved access to important minerals like lithium, copper and cobalt, which it currently mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Zimbabwe, Botswana, and other countries.
Beijing will also likely push for more exports of its China-made products, particularly renewable energy products, and technologies it has recently invested heavily in.
African countries, which often make deals bilaterally, will on the other hand look to clarify plans for some unfulfilled pledges from past summits.
Some, like the DRC, will also be seeking more cooperation that will ensure Chinese companies refine the raw materials they mine in the country. That approach will yield more revenue for these countries while providing more job opportunities for Africa’s young workers.
Who will attend?
At least 53 heads of state of African countries, or their representatives, as well as ministerial delegates, are expected to be at the summit.
Eswatini, the 54th African nation, has no ties with China and is likely to be the only absent country. It is the only African country that has diplomatic ties with Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory.
President Xi met with DRC’s President Felix Tshisekedi this week. Xi also met with the leaders of Togo, Mali, Comoros, and Djibouti, according to local news reports. On Tuesday, Xi also met President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will be a special guest at the summit. Several international and regional organisations will also attend the meeting as observers.
Where has China invested in Africa?
China is Africa’s biggest trade partner. Around a quarter of the continent’s exports – mostly minerals, fuels and metals – go to China, and about 16 percent of imports come from the country. China says annual trade volume could reach $300bn by 2035.
Beijing is also the continent’s biggest creditor. Between 2006 and 2021, it committed to investing $191bn in African countries.
In many cases, these investments take the form of grants, credit, and loans to finance major infrastructural projects.
About $155bn worth of promised loans until 2021 appear to have been implemented, de Kluiver noted in a study. However, the researcher added, it’s hard to paint a complete picture because of a “lack of transparency” regarding Chinese financing.
In 2021, during the last summit in Senegal, China again promised to invest $40bn collectively in African countries.
Chinese foreign direct investment in Africa has surpassed that of the US for over a decade, according to analysts at the China-Africa Research Initiative at John Hopkins University.
Are China-Africa relations controversial?
Chinese investments have been met with resistance at the local level in many countries, especially regarding environmental issues.
Last week, for instance, activists in Uganda protested and marched to the Chinese embassy in Kampala over an oil pipeline project that will transfer crude from the country to neighbouring Tanzania. The pipeline will be operated by a Chinese-state firm in collaboration with French energy and petroleum company Total, as well the Tanzanian and Ugandan governments. It is set to be the longest heated oil pipeline in the world. However, communities say it will displace thousands of people and destroy the environment.
China has separately faced criticism for failing to stop unsustainable practices such as illegal logging in several African countries that contribute to the market in China. The US-based Environmental Investigation Agency in a May 2024 report found that illegal timber transports from Mozambique to China have surged since 2017. The funds were going to armed groups, contributing to an insurgency in the country, the study said.
In addition, China’s critics accuse Beijing of luring African countries into significant loan agreements that they struggle to pay back – allowing Beijing to then seize lucrative assets – a practice some tag “debt diplomacy”.
Some countries like Zambia have defaulted on loans. By the end of 2022, Zambia amassed more than $18bn in external debt, with at least 12 percent of that owed to China, the country’s biggest bilateral creditor. In March, Lusaka reached a restructuring agreement with China and other creditors that saw about $840m of the claims written off.
China has repeatedly rejected the notion that it is trying to entrap nations — in Africa and elsewhere — using debt. The “debt trap” theory has also been challenged by some experts who say Chinese investments are too plentiful and too fragmented for the country to have a deliberate “debt strategy”.
