Russian and Chinese partnerships seem to be tipping Africa from the frying pan into the fire, writes Shastra Noni
Waves of colonists have swept across Earth’s landscapes for millennia – ancient Greeks and Phoenicians, then Romans, Huns, Vikings, Persians, Arabs and others – claiming “empty” land, raiding settlements, and killing, displacing, or assimilating anyone in their path. In more recent centuries Western powers did much the same, extracting resources wherever they could. Thus much of Africa’s recent history has been dominated by outsiders.
The General Act, an economic arrangement that came out of a conference in Berlin in 1885, sought to keep the peace between these powers. The US, most European countries, the Ottoman empire and others were signatories to the act, which set the rules for taking possession of territory in Africa, navigating its waterways, and abolishing slave trade.
Coups, military agreements and arms trade with Russia, 2023
European Parliamentary Research Service
When World War II ended, two superpowers emerged: the US and the USSR. While the former was working towards total domination, the USSR began engaging Asia, Africa and parts of South America to drum up more support for a socialist model of economic management. For Africa, the relationship bolstered hopes of finally casting off colonial masters’ shackles.
The Soviets helped African countries gather a voice in the international community when they were admitted to the UN and other bodies, and used them to rally support for its policies against the western powers. Arms and funds continued to flow between the USSR and African countries until 1991.
By the mid 1950s many African nations had gained independence from their European masters. Vestiges of the colonial past remained, though, in inherited language, legal, and monetary systems.
Between the 1950s and the 1970s the World Bank and International Monetary Fund bankrolled a great deal of infrastructure development in Africa. However, the projects were insufficient to lift African countries out of poverty. Few were suited to local needs or paid off economically, a consequence of their conception not taking into account the social, economic and cultural realities of Africa. Djibouti’s railway network, a French project, was among a number of development projects terminated for these reasons.
By the 1980s those investments had gnawed a huge hole in African countries’ finances, leaving them indebted to the financial institutions. The austerity that accompanied subsequent structural adjustment programmes in affected countries exacerbated poverty and social chaos, in some cases triggering coups.
Arming both sides
The USSR’s collapse in 1991 saw communism forsaken in many of its former member and satellite states.
Russia was desperate. It had little by way of economic means apart from a huge stockpile of weapons. Sub-Saharan African countries with which Russia had relations during the Soviet era – among them Angola, Namibia, Guinea-Bissau and South Africa, supported in their liberation struggles by the USSR – were eager to get their hands on those weapons. The illicit trades armed not only African countries’ militaries but also, in most cases, their militias. What had been covert under the USSR regime became overt. These countries began exchanging cheaper military hardware and equipment made by the former USSR for diamonds, gold, animal skins, timber, and anything else they had, giving Russia a stronger foothold in Africa.
Most of the trades were between former USSR military personnel who, in the chaos of the USSR’s collapse, became independent operators and turned to arms-dealing.
Coups, civil war and military destabilisation of political structures became a regular feature in many parts of Africa after the 1990s.
Energy and mining co-operation with Russia, 2023
Source: European Parliamentary Research Service
The Russians used middle-east countries, notably the UAE, to traffic their weapons. The illicit trade quickly diversified into a vast network of illegal arms, drugs and human trafficking. It spread across Europe, with the spoils pouring into London, Paris and Munich. The Russian mafia’s trade was followed by legitimate trade between Russia, Europe and the US as Russia opened its market to American and European goods, and exported minerals, oil and gas to much of Europe. With access to European financial markets, Russian oligarchs began parking their wealth in Europe’s financial centres.
Former KGB officer Vladimir Putin had by this time risen to preside over Russia. He began challenging Western hegemony, at the same time engaging with Africa in return for support whenever the West initiated action or policies targeting Russia.
In 2014 Russia annexed Crimea. Eight years later it invaded Ukraine. When it seized Ukraine’s port of Odesa, it cut off grain and other food exports, pushing up prices around the globe, and exacerbating hunger and poverty in the poorest of the poor countries, including Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, and Sudan.
As EU nations began supplying Ukraine with arms and funds to defend itself, Russia deepened its engagement with Africa, setting up embassies in various countries, returning to Burkina Faso after an absence of 30 years, and starting to operate its national carrier, Aeroflot, in Seychelles and Mauritius.
Of the nine coups in Africa since 2020, eight were in former French colonies. In March this year, Niger, which hosted a US drone station, expelled US troops. Earlier France withdrew troops from Burkina Faso, which, like Mali, experienced two coups in the period. As UN missions and French military bases closed across the Sahel, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso turned to private Russian armies for “regime support” and to train their local armies.
Bolstered by Russia’s backing in international forums, African leaders see it as a partner that treats them with equal respect, capable of providing military support and security to combat rebel leaders.
However, should there be no let in the war in Ukraine, Russia’s military support in Africa could be redeployed there. And if Ukraine capitulates to Russia, Russia could become a more aggressive player in Africa, plunging it deeper into civil crisis.
Operated by China
In the 1970s China began investing in Africa. First it built a rail line connecting Tanzania and Zambia. Then it operated experimental rice farms in Sierra Leone. The Chinese left when civil war broke out, but returned in the late 2000s. By 2015 China’s limited trade engagement had morphed into sovereign investments to create the New Silk Road, otherwise known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), in a bid to capture a huge slice of global trade.
By 2022 100 ports, 100,000km of freeways and 10,000km of railways had been built, financed, or were being operated by China in Africa, according to its ambassador to Nigeria, Cui Jian Chun.
The US Institute of Peace says China is likely to continue to build dual-use ports around Africa, mixing commercial and military facilities “to downplay the military significance of China’s strategic port investments”.
China has had a navy presence off the Horn of Africa since 2008 to combat piracy, and opened a military base in Djibouti in 2017 to secure trade corridors.
Chatham House researchers Alex Vines, Armida van Rij and Henry Tugendhat note that Saudi Arabia and Japan also have military bases in Djibouti. Accommodating foreign bases generates both political and economic capital for host countries – the researchers estimate this accounted for 0,1% of Djibouti’s GDP in 2020 – but can create a domestic liability if the bases are perceived by citizens as a threat to the host country’s sovereignty.
Debts to China, 2022
Created by Preyash Shah | Insightscoop.substack.com, using data from Boston University and the IMF.
Stepping stone
By the time China began registering economic growth of more than 10% annually, it was making strides towards achieving Deng Xiaoping’s vision of becoming a global manufacturing hub.
Deng’s smart policy intervention instituted major economic reforms, switching from communism to an economic model of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. To fulfil his vision, China began modernising its coastal region, relaxed norms to facilitate manufacture of low-end products using cheap labour, and subsidised land rent. Under this regime, industries proliferated, and multinationals from Coca-Cola to Boeing entered the Chinese market.
Further economic reforms instituted by President Xi Jinping catapulted China from a focus on low-end products to innovation in technology, space, and aerospace, aiming to cut the country’s dependence on technology imports.
Foreseeing push-back against this from the West – possibly even sanctions – Xi needed an alternative market, built by China, on Chinese terms, not just to market its goods, but also to access mineral and other resources via a reliable supply chain. Africa, with 54 countries, was the perfect candidate to help make China self-sufficient by 2025, and to help it dominate world trade by 2049.
The BRI’s enormous portfolio of infrastructure projects, announced by Xi in 2013, was initially envisaged as an alternative trade bloc connected by a 3,000km overland economic corridor connecting Asia with Europe via Pakistan. This would circumvent the need for goods to traverse the Indian Ocean, where sea routes were controlled by the Indian navy, the US, and their allies.
Over the next decade the initiative expanded to encompass more than 150 countries in Africa, Latin America and Oceania. The Chinese loans granted to these countries amounted to more than $1-trillion, “making China the world’s largest debt collector”.
China’s Marshall Plan
China’s entry to Africa was relatively easy. It was similar to Africa in many ways; just decades earlier it endured the economic deprivation Africa endures to this day. It appeared to offer a viable economic model, building infrastructure and helping Africa trade raw materials and minerals in exchange for cheap Chinese goods.
It sold the BRI by comparing it with the US’s Marshall Plan, conceived to bolster economies ravaged by World War II. That plan’s benefits to countries like Japan were tangible enough.
The BRI’s very long-term loans to African countries were ostensibly crafted with attractive payment terms and interest rates as low as 2%. However, the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent think tank, says China’s outstanding loans, estimated a year ago to be the equivalent of a quarter of its GDP, are regarded by China as commercial endeavours, with interest on loans close to market rates, and that China expects to be repaid in full.
Some BRI investments have involved opaque bidding processes and have required the employment of Chinese construction firms. The opacity is said to have allowed contractors to inflate costs and accommodate bribes for African politicians.
Studies in 2015 quoted Pakistan’s then central bank governor, Ashraf Mahmood Wathra, as saying that out of $46-billion in loans for the China-Pakistan corridor project, he didn’t know “how much is debt, how much is equity and how much is in kind”, or what the project’s debt implications were.
The council says the loans could give China geopolitical leverage over signatory countries – many of its government-to-government contracts restrict debt restructuring and give China the right to demand repayment at any time, rather than waiting for revenue to flow from the projects – so the debt could be turned into a tool for political support on hot-button issues.
Most of the contracts governing these loans bar indebted countries from seeking help from the Paris Club, which has legal, rule-based means to restructure sovereign debt to recoup investments.
Unlike Western democracies, which have institutions that, when presented with overwhelming evidence, may review their stand with compassion, China – like Russia – lacks civil institutions that can force its government to follow through on legal or economic contracts. This appears to lend credence to US worries that the initiative “could be a Trojan horse for China-led regional development and military expansion”.
The BRI’s focus has been to first develop huge ports along Africa’s eastern coast, and from the Gulf of Aden to the Mediterranean, to transport raw material out of Africa. The ports could in future also be used by its military to conduct surveillance and to blockade maritime traffic.
The rail projects will connect China’s industrial and mining investments with the ports, carrying raw materials, including copper and cobalt from Congo, as well as phosphate, gold, iron ore, cocoa, bauxite, lithium, uranium, oil, steel, granite, and marble, to the sea in exchange for Chinese finished goods and much of the labour used to build the BRI projects.
Worries beyond debt
All but two of Africa’s countries have agreements with China under the BRI, with cumulative borrowing at more than $300-billion.
As worries about the debt mount, so have the protests over Chinese activity in Africa: in Nigeria over unpaid wages; in Tanzania over forced relocation; in Uganda over unfair competition; in Madagascar over fishing rights; in Kenya against the building of a rail line through a national park and over environmental concerns about a power project; in Cameroon, where houses were razed to make way for a deep-sea port; in Chad over poor pay and harsh working conditions under Chinese employers; and in Ghana over abuse on Chinese fishing vessels.
Djibouti’s debt to China is equivalent to 85% of its GDP – back-breaking for a low-income country. Of Kenya’s external debt, 72% is owed to China. Half of Angola’s external debt, $21-billion, is owed to China.
Long-standing frustration
Many believe the struggle against residual colonial power nudged Africa towards Russia and China.
Arikana Chihombori, the US’s former African Union representative, criticised the West repeatedly during her tenure for preaching and prescribing to Africa and setting agendas without consultation.
Mariel Ferragamo, writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, says the shift in loyalties “can be attributed to long-standing frustration with the failures of Western intervention and to many African countries’ simmering resentment over a lack of representation in international institutions. It also stems from a growing desire to avoid choosing sides between major powers, a mindset many Africans see as a relic of the Cold War era.”
However, reciprocity of Russia’s respect and China’s promise of economic freedom through the BRI appear to be fading illusions.
As worsening exchange rates are inflating Africa’s debts, several countries want to abandon the CFA franc, which is pegged to the euro. The move, largely driven by a perception that the currency’s historical ties to Europe “keep these countries in slavery”, is likely to cause market turbulence, adding to their economic woes.
And the fact that only 17 of the 49 delegations that attended the Russia-Africa summit last year included heads of state signalled waning enchantment with Russia.
Chatham House commented that African leaders who did attend were likely to have concluded that Russia, itself divided, could not offer what they needed.
Senior council fellow Ebenezer Obadare told Ferragamo: “For African countries that have long complained about being trampled upon by the bigger powers in the system, the expectation was that many would automatically pitch their tents with Ukraine as opposed to Russia. But after years of being dictated to by the US and other Western countries, siding with Russia serves as a reminder that African countries are able to play [the political] game as astutely as any other.”
While Russia and China co-exist as members of the Brics alliance, and would both like to edge the West out of Africa, it is conceivable that their competition for Africa’s resources could drive the two apart.
Most African countries would prefer not to take sides, preferring to cultivate their own international partnerships. Nonetheless, all with BRI agreements – 52 out of 54 – have turned their backs on Taiwan.
Obadare, noting that China’s evident determination to knock the US off its global pedestal raised geopolitical stakes, points to “evidence that many African countries see an opportunity to play the US, China, and Russia – not to mention nontraditional powers like India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – off against one another”. He feels the real debate is not “whether African countries control their own diplomatic destiny, but how their agency is exercised”.
That puts the ball squarely in African countries’ court.
- This article draws on reports from the Council on Foreign Relations, Reuters, World Economic Forum, Renew Democracy Initiative, CNN, the Green Finance and Development Center, Observer Research Foundation, the Ominira Initiative for Economic Advancement’s Blood Gold Report, as well as a range of academic papers.
