November 30, 2021 09:46
On November 30, a summit between Africa and China closes in Dakar, which has become the continent’s first economic partner in two decades. At the same time, the European Commission leaks the amount of investments dedicated to infrastructure projects in developing countries: 300 billion euros, obviously destined to counteract Chinese influence.
Finally, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has just returned from a trip to Africa that marks the return of the United States to a continent ignored during Donald Trump’s mandate.
To this picture we must add Russia, which moves its pedestrians in the field of security, especially with the mercenaries of the Wagner group in Central Africa and the Sahel; Turkey, whose President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was in Africa last month; and again India, Japan, Iran and the Gulf countries.
Countering China
In short, today there is no medium or large power that does not take an interest in Africa. At the origin of this attention there are more or less commendable reasons.
In the last decade, China has occupied a central place in the continent, through its policy of building infrastructure and huge investments: the Nairobi-Mombasa, Addis Ababa-Djibouti and Lagos-Ibadan railways, but also roads, stadiums and so on. .
Africa continues to see China as a more effective development model than the West
The Western counter-offensive in Africa is mainly based on the will to oppose China. Africa and its 55 states are an important piece of the global game of influences, not to mention UN votes or access to raw materials. France and Europe, despite their disadvantage deriving from the colonial era, add for geographical reasons the need for a common future to face the demographic and migratory challenges, but also those of development and climate.
China also has its challenges to face, starting with Africans’ “loss of illusion”, as French researcher Thierry Pairault defined it in the journal Jeune Afrique. This disaffection is due to broken promises and corruption scandals, such as the one that just broke out in the Democratic Republic of Congo thanks to the revelations of the Congo Hold-up project on the embezzlement of the Kabila era.
Yet Africa continues to consider China as a more effective development model than that of Westerners, among other things less demanding on the issue of rights and government management.
African countries are beginning to understand the advantage they can gain from this courtship by competing powers: the possibility of emancipating themselves from dependence on one partner.
Blinken, head of American diplomacy, was concerned to repeat during his visit that he does not intend to ask Africans to make a choice (by implication: between China and the United States) as in the days of the Cold War. It is a clever move, because Blinken would not be at all sure of winning if he asked the Africans to take sides…
Meanwhile, covid-19 confuses perceptions. China advertises its help with great fanfare, while Westerners have appeared selfish for a long time. The cancellation of flights between the West and Southern Africa after the announcement of the discovery of the omicron variant provoked the furious reaction of the president of Malawi, who spoke of “afrofobia”. Perhaps it is precisely in the common battle against the virus that the choice of alliances and partners will take place.
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)
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