Will rising insecurity in Africa push China away?
I fully understand where that anxiety comes from given the continents violent, painful past dealings with foreign powers. After all, it wasnt that long ago when actual colonialism was a reality, and then even after liberation, the great powers stuck around for decades to further pillage Africas resources. So, yeah, those concerns are reasonable. Theyre just not accurate. READ MORE Chinas relationship with Africa goes deeper than just resource extraction  The biggest problem confronting Africa today vis--vis China isnt that the Chinese are going to take over, because theres really no evidence to suggest thats actually happening. No. Instead, people should be much more concerned that the Chinese might get bored, find the region too difficult to engage, and too costly to do business. The danger is that they might decide that at the end of the day its just not worth it and pack up and leave. There are strong indicators suggesting that this process is already underway:  Loans: Its been months, possibly even more than a year, since weve seen a single announcement by a Chinese policy bank about a new financing deal in Africa. In fact, I cant even remember the last time that I saw a deal that involved either the China Exim Bank or China Development Bank in Africa. It just doesnt happen anymore. Just this week alone, we got another indication that the well-documented pullback in Chinese development financing is hitting Africa hard when Nigerias Transportation Minister Rotimi Amaechi said he was giving up on Chinese creditors to finance a pair of railways. The Chinese money spigot that poured billions into African infrastructure development has been turned off. Possibly for good. And African finance ministries have gotten the message. When they talk about debt financing today, theyre either going to the bond markets or the DFIs and dont even mention China. Trade: The painful reality is that China no longer really needs what Africa has to sell, at least nowhere near as much as it did 10-15 years ago when they first started to engage the continent. 70% of what China buys from Africa is a mix of oil, minerals, and timber  commodities that it can now source among dozens, even hundreds of countries along its vast Belt and Road network. Sure, there are a few strategic resources, namely iron ore, coltan, and cobalt, that China still needs, but thats pretty insignificant in the larger scheme of things. The fact is that two-way trade volumes may never again surpass the $200bn level as they did in 2015. China just has too many choices today on where it can source the same commodities that it buys from Africa, often at a lower cost, given the continents inefficient infrastructure. Also, consider that last years $187bn in two-way trade was the lowest of any region in the world and just a tiny fraction of Chinas $4.6trn in global trade balance in 2020. Of course, China is not going to pull out entirely. That would be foolish. Instead, Beijing appears to be in the process of re-orienting its strategy in Africa to focus more on politics, health issues, technology, standards-setting, and military engagement  all things that have a very light footprint compared to the loan-fuelled resource-for-infrastructure boom of the past ten years. In the end, regrettably, this is bad news for Africa as a growing number of countries struggle to hold back the chaos and despair brought on by the Covid-induced financial crisis. And if China loses interest in the continent, one also has to wonder if other countries (US cough cough) will follow. Africa Insight Wake up to the essential with the Editor's picks. Sign up Also receive offers from The Africa Report Also receive offers from The Africa Report's partners SUCCESS ERROR  This article was first published in The China Africa Project.