Chinese leader Xi Jinping is rolling out the red carpet for African leaders this week at a high-level summit in Beijing as China looks to deepen ties with the resource-rich continent that it has furnished with billions in loans for infrastructure and development projects.
But what kind of lessons does the experience of African countries hold for other regions where China has also become a political and economic force?
Finding Perspective: Beijing has said the September 4-6 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit will be its largest diplomatic event since the COVID-19 pandemic, with leaders and other delegates from every African state except Eswatini.
China has increasingly expanded ties with African countries in the past decade and Beijing has become the continent's largest bilateral lender, investor, and trade partner.
This has seen China furnish governments with billions of dollars in loans that have helped build much-needed infrastructure and bring economic growth, but also sometimes stoked controversy by saddling countries with huge debts.
FOCAC is Beijing's main forum for engaging with Africa and this year's gathering will tackle issues ranging from health-care cooperation to debt relief to securing the rights for critical minerals.
African leaders are looking for more balanced trade and continued investments from China, while Beijing is expected to push its green technologies products like electric vehicles (EVs) and its solar industry, especially amid Western curbs on those exports.
A New Era: As Alex Vines, the Africa research director at Chatham House, told me, the green-technology push isn't a surprise and has buy-in from both sides.
"Energy provision is key for Africa's development trajectory, and so investing in renewables will be welcomed," he said.
Chinese investment in Africa peaked around 2016 and Chinese loans to African governments have since declined significantly. The old China model of offering loans for large infrastructure projects and rapid industrialization has not quite disappeared, but certainly lost steam amid China's slowing economy and the difficulty some African countries have had in repaying loans.
As Beijing is eyeing new markets for its renewables sector, Africa is a logical target. It's a young and fast-growing continent that, according to the International Monetary Fund, contains nine of the world's 20 fastest-growing economies in 2024 and China sees it as a vital market for its products and its own economic growth.
And while there are petro-states in Africa, many countries deal with energy insecurity and are eager for the more affordable products like Chinese-made smartphones and EVs that have seen their quality dramatically increase in recent years.
Why It Matters: If any lessons can be drawn from Africa's trajectory with China for other regions around the world, it's that local governments are just as influential in this process as Beijing.
It can be easy to view everything through the lens of China's global ambitions, which are very real, but they only tell part of the story.
Debt owed to China is a major factor on the continent, and some African countries have large Chinese loans that they're struggling to repay.
But Vines says that their situations can't be entirely blamed on Chinese loans. Countries like Kenya and Zambia have poorly managed their debt to all creditors, not only China, while others have managed to navigate their Chinese debt arrangements without risk or incident.
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Added to that, African countries know they are becoming more attractive to multiple outside powers and using this dynamic to have more room to balance their ties with partners beyond China and the West, like Russia, India, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey.
"Local agency needs to be strengthened more robustly," Mandira Bagwandeen, an expert on China's ties to Africa and a lecturer at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, told me.
"It's not China's responsibility to be sure that whatever deal they strike is in the local country's interest. It's the responsibility of African officials and it's ultimately up to them to make sure that it works for their country."
By RFE/RL
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