Ejeviome Eloho OtoboAHEAD of the 8th session of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC-8) to be held on 28-30 November in Dakar, Senegal, several important policy papers have recently been published, examining various facets of Africa-China relations.
These papers can be classified into three categories: Those that identify key issues that are likely to feature at FOCAC-8 and outline specific proposals for deepening cooperation between Africa and China ( From China-Africa To Africa-China: A Blueprint for a Green and Inclusive Continent-Wide African Strategy Towards China; Mapping the Future of Africa-China Relations: Insights from West Africa; and FOCAC at 21: Future Trajectories of China-Africa Relations).Those written mainly as briefing papers on Africa-China relations for United States policymakers (China in Africa: The Role of Trade, Investments and Loans Amidst Shifting Geopolitical Ambitions; and 5 Things US Policy makers must Understand About China-Africa Relations). And one titled Banking on the Belt and Road: Insights from a new global dataset of Chinese development projects across 165 countries, which sheds much light into China’s development financing practices, with significant implications for Africa.
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Each of these papers has contributed to deepening our understanding of the scope and complexity of Africa-China relations. Yet only two of these policy papers devote space to the growing list of complaints that now bedevil Africa-China relations, and even those two focus on very limited number of issues. This paper examines three key complaints that are emerging as major sources of friction regarding China’s role in Africa. Understanding the nature and sources of those complaints – which I refer to as “pressure points” or “sources of fragility” in Africa-China relations – is key to building long-term relationship of mutual trust and cooperation between the two sides. What are these pressure points in this important relationship? And what can be done about them? These are the questions addressed in this paper.
Africa-China Economic Relations in a Nutshell
Before examining those issues, it helps to explain the key features of the relationship between China and Africa. While there is a nascent military cooperation component, the economic component has dominated the relationship since the founding of FOCAC in 2000. Indeed, the pressure points have emerged mainly around various aspects of the economic cooperation. The story of the economic cooperation is best told in figures relating to trade, investment and finance. China’s two-way trade with African countries has risen from $11billion in 2000 to US$187 billion in 2020, after hitting US$200 billion in 2019.
China’s foreign direct investment in Africa as of 2019 stood at US$44billion. China has made multi-year pledges of economic assistance to African countries starting with FOCAC-I in 2000, when China pledged $1billion; $5billion at 2006 FOCAC; and $10billion at the 2009 FOCAC. Its pledge was doubled at the 2012 FOCAC to $20 billion. At the 2015 FOCAC Summit in Johannesburg, the amount was trebled to $60 billion for three years up to 2018; and at the 2018 FOCAC Summit in Beijing, the amount remained at the same level of $60billion. 70 percent of the $60 billion pledged in 2018 FOCAC has been disbursed or allocated for use as at the end of 2020, implying an unspent balance of $18billion.
The Johns Hopkins University China-Africa Research Initiative (CARI) estimates that China has signed 1141 loan commitments worth $153 billion to African governments during the period 2000-2019 and holds 21 percent of Africa’s debt. The G20 Debt Suspension Initiative, launched to alleviate the impact of and in response to COVID-19 pandemic, marked the first time that China has participated in a multilateral debt relief.
Meanwhile, forty-six African countries have signed the Memorandum of Understanding on the China-led Belt and Road Initiative. Twenty African countries, including eleven full members and nine prospective members, have joined the China-inspired Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The report Banking on the Belt and Road: Insights from a new global dataset of Chinese development projects revealed that China financed and competed 3,128 projects in Africa between 2000-2017 with the following sectoral distribution: Health, 24.15%; Education, 14.14%; Government, 14.14%; Transport, 7.52%; Energy, 5.28%, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 5.09%; and Communications, 4.57%, with other sectors accounting for 25.11%.
Three Pressure Points in Africa-China Relations
The pressure points in Africa-China relations can be classified into three main categories: economic, social and environmental.
Economic Concerns
The most frequently encountered criticism of China’s economic relations with Africa is that it has ensnared African countries in “debt traps” — the notion that China deliberately offers huge loans to, and imposes stringent terms on, African countries, through for example, collateralisation of development loans, creating room for possible seizure of critical national assets. While the debt trap narrative has been dismissed as exaggerated, a new concern buttressed by some evidence is that China’s lending is marked by lack of transparency, reflected both in confidential clauses that bar the borrower from full disclosure and in the determined efforts by African governments to maintain a shroud of secrecy over China-related loan contracts. Two current examples of this practice pertain to the refusal of the government of Liberia to disclose the details relating to the 25-years Iron Ore deal involving the Chinese mining firm (BAO Chico Resources) and the Kenya attorney-general’s effort in fending off NGOs access to the terms of the Standard Gauge Railway contract.
Meanwhile, in several African countries, it has taken political pressure or administrative action or change of government for the loans or guarantees on indebtedness to China to be fully disclosed. In Nigeria, it was the pressure from members of the House of Representatives, which included creating an investigative committee on China loans, that compelled the Debt Management Office to publish the data on China’s loans to the country. In Kenya, it was a leaked report from the auditor general which revealed that the Port of Mombasa was offered as a guarantee in case of default of the $3.2 billion loan for the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway. In Zambia, it was the commitment by the newly elected President in August 2021 that allowed the exact loans by China to be fully disclosed.
Even more fraught is the finding in Banking on the Belt and Road: Insights from a new global dataset of Chinese development project report that the average government underreported its China debt by an amount equivalent to 5.8 percent of GDP compared to the median underreported debt of 1.8 percent. A paper published, by CARI following the election of Zambia’s new president estimates that Zambia’s debt to China was twice the size generally assumed: $6.6billion rather than $3.4billion.
Thus, Zambia’s indebtedness to China is nearly one-third of its GDP of $19billion. Another feature of China’s lending that has caused much concern is the difficulty in obtaining debt restructuring. This aspect is gradually changing as exemplified by the debt restructuring that have been granted to some African countries both in the pre-and post-COVID-19 period. CARI documents 16 cases of debt restructuring worth $7.5 billion in 10 African countries between 2000 and 2019. Angola, Ethiopia, and Zambia are among the countries that have benefited from China’s post-COVID 19 debt relief.
As China’s model of economic cooperation has evolved from the initial “natural resources-for infrastructure” (trade-by barter of sorts), also dubbed the Angola Model, to “The China-Africa Swap” (allowing African countries to offer resource assets as collateral to access loans at manageable fixed interest rates rather than by trade-by-barter),the criticisms have morphed from “debt trap“ narrative to difficult terms and conditions, such as unfair terms of contracts and using Chinese rather than international arbitration arrangements for contract dispute resolution.
Then, there are complaints regarding Chinese illegal mining of gold in Zamfara state (Northwest Nigeria) and in Ituri and South Kivu provinces (Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo). The authorities in South Kivu province, in August 2021, suspended the work of the six Sino-foreign joint ventures in Mwenga area, after it was discovered that the companies had been mining gold without a government’s license. This has prompted law makers in the Democratic Republic of Congo to advocate for stronger legal and regulatory framework for the mining sector and demand compensation for the illegal mining that has taken place.
There has also been illegal wildlife trafficking in Malawi and illegal timbre trade in Mozambique by Chinese persons. At the same time, the growing recognition of the unfair terms of previously signed contracts has prompted some leaders, most notably President Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to initiate reviews of such agreements in the mining and the logging sectors. One such agreement nearing the completion of review is the Sicomines Copper and Cobalt joint venture, which is majority owned (68 percent) by Sinohydro and China Railway. DRC is home to over 51 percent of the global cobalt reserves, produces nearly 70 percent of cobalt feedback annually, and Chinese mining firms account for 40 percent of the cobalt output in DRC.
Here, as in the two other categories of pressure points examined below, it helps to distinguish between complaints arising from China official policy measures, misconduct of private or state-owned enterprises, and misdemeanour by individual Chinese citizens. While debt-related and resources-for-infrastructure complaints arise from China’s official policy, most of the illegal mining and wildlife activities have mainly involved Chinese private enterprises and individuals. Yet, they all impact on how China is perceived in Africa.
Social Concerns
The scale and scope of the complaints against China in the social category are wide-ranging, from labour rights violations, to discriminatory treatment of African workers in Chinese enterprises operating in Africa, the maltreatment of African migrants in China, and the hiring of more Chinese rather than African workers for various construction projects in Africa. Findings from two studies undertaken in the past five years have undercut the last of these complaints.
A 2017 McKinsey study titled Dance of the Lions and Dragons: How are Africa and China engaging and how the partnership evolves? found that of the 1,000 Chinese firms in eight African countries with significant Chinese investment, 89 percent of labour workers in those enterprises were Africans. A 2019 study by the School of Oriental and African Studies titled Industrial Development, Construction and Employment in Africa: A Comparative Study which examined Chinese investment in Ethiopia and Angola — two countries with high Chinese investment –found that local labour participation rates were 74 and 90 percent respectively.
Even so, the incidents of labour rights violations, including suppression of pay-related protests and abuse of African workers by Chinese managers has been a major concern. Indeed, the book –China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants are Building a New Empire in Africa—which explored China’s role in Africa in the early 2010s– documents several incidents of labour rights violations and abuse of African workers by Chinese managers in selected African countries. A 2011 Human Rights Watch report titled Zambia: Workers Detail Abuse in Chinese-Owned Mines found that Chinese-owned copper mining companies in Zambia routinely flouted “labour laws and regulations designed to protect workers safety and the right to organise”.
The NGO—Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID)’s — publication, released in November 2021, titled The Road to Ruin?: Electric Vehicles and Workers rights abuse at the DR Congo industrial cobalt mines” which focused on the 5 largest foreign cobalt mining firms –three of which were Chinese (China Moybdenum Tenke Fungurume Mining, Sicomnes, and Somidez ) — found that, among the Chinese companies, there was a pattern of forced overtime without receiving overtime pay; poor quality or inadequate personal protective equipment supplied to African workers; and incidents of racism and discrimination meted on Congolese workers by Chinese expatriate managers.
But there have been other recent incidents that have strengthened the perception of Chinese racist and condescending attitudes towards Africans. The most high-profile case was the maltreatment of African migrants which occurred in April 2020 in Guangzhou, the city with the largest African migrant community in Asia. The trigger for this event was the official announcement requiring all foreigners to test for COVID-19. There was strong suspicion that Africans were the target of the testing policy, as they were ordered to self-isolate or quarantine, whether or not they tested positive for COVID-19. Indeed, the official decision prompted landlords to give eviction notices to their African tenants, resulting in many of them sleeping on the streets, shops and hotels, even when they did not test positive for COVID-19.
This incident generated diplomatic row, leading a group of Beijing-based African Ambassadors to write a letter to Chinese authorities complaining about the “stigmatisation and discrimination” against Africans. Then, there were the demeaning comments directed at President Kenyatta of Kenya by a Chinese restaurant worker in Nairobi, resulting in his expulsion from the country. In September 2021, seven Chinese nationals appeared before a High Court in South Africa and pleaded guilty to multiple charges of human trafficking and violating child labour laws. There have also been incidents of sexual abuse and exploitation of Angolan women by Chinese migrants in the city of Benguela.
Environmental Concerns
Several complaints have been levelled against Chinese-owned enterprises (state-owned enterprises, joint ventures or private firms) whose operations have caused severe environmental degradation in various African countries. Unsurprisingly, the incidents of environmental degradation have occurred mostly in the African countries where Chinese enterprises have footprints in oil exploration and mining of other mineral resources.
One of the earliest cases of oil exploration-related environmental degradation by a Chinese firm occurred in 2002, involving Sinopec which was prospecting for oil in Gabon’s Nature Reserve by dynamiting park areas and carving roads through the thick rainforest, leading the government to order Sinopec to stop prospecting for oil in that forest. Bauxite mining by Chinese companies in Ghana and Guinea have also caused environmental degradation in myriad ways.
In Ghana, the resources-for-infrastructure deal signed in 2016 with Sinohydro Corporation, as part of the $2billion Master Project Support Agreement for the construction of a range of infrastructure facilities (roads, housing and hospitals), has led to severe deforestation of the Atewa Forest in Southeast Ghana, where the mine is located. In Guinea, Bauxite mining has resulted in the pollution of farmlands and water resources of the nearby communities. In Mozambique, sand mining by Haiyu Corporation has adversely impacted the housing and living conditions in the Nagonha community.
In Zimbabwe, the government banned coal mining in Hwange National Park in September 2020 after three weeks of public protests against Chinese mining licenses in that park. The campaign was led by the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association. In Zambia, public health inspectors shut down a Chinese-owned copper mine in Southern Zambia Sinazongwe district in response to violations of occupational safety regulations –not wearing basic safety equipment including shoes, suits and gloves.
Conclusion: Managing the Pressure Points
Today, China is the most important bilateral partner for many African countries. China’s ascendancy into that position has occurred largely through a combination of China’s deliberate and sustained effort to nurture relations with African countries and the display of indifference by the region’s “traditional” partners, especially during the two lost decades of Africa’s development. More significantly, the scale and scope of China’s pledges of financial assistance to Africa since the inception of FOCAC has been impressive.
In the lead to the 2021 FOCAC, political leaders and pundits have turned attention to such questions as: Will China offer a new tranche of financial assistance to African countries and if so, what amount? What should China do to promote health cooperation in the COVID-19 era? How should China support the African Continental Free Trade Area? Will the United States’ newly announced Build Back Better World (B3W) represent a credible alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and how should Africa respond to the former? How can China contribute to Africa’s economic transformation? After 21 years of FOCAC, what should be the key features of a new strategic direction for Africa-China’s relationship?
On the last question, the pressure points offer growing evidence that Africa-China relationship is showing signs of stress and strains. Any credible effort to chart a new direction must address the pressure points. China’s relations with African countries are broadening out from a state-centric to multi-stakeholders’ orientation. There are four stakeholders whose perspectives will increasingly shape Africa-China relations: the governments, the private sector, the non-governmental organisations, and the African people. While African government leaders and business executives have a largely beneficent perspective of China, the non-government organisations remain sceptical, if not critical.
Meanwhile, Afrobarometre survey conducted in 34 African countries between 2009 and mid-2021 sowed that 62 percent of the people saw China’s influence in positive light compared to 60 percent who held the same view with respect to USA. This implies that the general public has near identical level of admiration for both big powers’ role in Africa. But that does not suggest that African people will be indifferent to Chinese firms’ maltreatment of, and discriminatory practices towards, African workers; the maltreatment of African migrants in China; and environmental degradation in the countries where they exploit natural resources.
Historically, China has prided itself as a country untainted by colonial rule in Africa, adheres to the principle of non-interference in internal affairs of African countries, and respects the national sovereignty and laws of African countries. Yet, the decision to expel the six Chinese companies involved in illegal gold mining in South Kivu province in DRC in September, 2021, and refer them for trial, punishment and sanction in the home provinces of these companies in China (Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangsu) rather than in DRC has raised doubts about China’s strict adherence and commitment to the principle of respect for the laws of African countries.
Allowing the pressure points to build up or multiply will invite political scepticism and popular distrust towards China, not unlike what Africa’s former colonial powers continue to encounter in the region. African and Chinese leaders cannot wish away the build-up in the pressure points identified in this paper and would need to make more effort to tackle them than is currently the case. To preserve the Africa-China relationship requires creating a coherent framework for addressing the pressure points, which can be ignored at great peril to both sides.
Ejeviome Eloho Otobo is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Global Governance Institute, Brussels, Belgium and author of Africa in Transition: A New Way of Looking at Progress in the Region.
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