China-Africa: $60 bn investments for global change

China’s President Xi Jinping has offered $60bn in financial support to African countries and written off debt for the continent’s poorer nations.

Speaking at the opening of a major summit with African leaders in Beijing on Monday, Xi said the figure included $15bn in grants, interest-free loans and concessional loans, a credit line of $20bn, $10bn for “development financing” and $5bn to buy imports from the continent.

China has often been accused of debt trap diplomacy, with African countries having accumulated over $100 billion in debt from the second powerful economy in the world.

But speaking through a translator, Jinping says that his government is not trying to trap the continent.

He says that China is not trying to impose on the will of African countries through aid or pursuing political gains.

Africa has three development bottlenecks — lack of infrastructure, skilled workforce and funding. There are more developing countries in the African Union than any other multilateral grouping in the world.

By the end of 2017, China had invested 100 billion U.S. dollars in Africa. Projects include the Nairobi-Mombasa standard gauge railway in Kenya and the Ethiopia-Djibouti railway. In fact, the railways and highways that have been built across Africa by Chinese firms are long enough, if connected, to stretch from China to Rwanda.

Cooperation is not just about concrete and glass. There is also the question of how to bring the peoples of different cultures closer together. This can be achieved through knowledge sharing and cultural exposure. To this end, more than 160,000 people from Africa have received training under China-Africa programs since the Johannesburg summit in 2015, and over 200 schools had been built by the end of 2015. There are now 54 Confucius Institutes in 41 African countries since the first one in Africa opened in Nairobi in 2006.

China will extend a total of 60 billion dollars of financing to Africa, President Xi announced Monday at the opening ceremony of the FOCAC Beijing summit. The financing will be provided in the form of government assistance as well as investment and financing by financial institutions and companies.

The summit has the potential to make real differences to topics — growth, welfare, environment — that have prominence outside the FOCAC member states. China has already entered into a new stage of social and economic development. Is Africa, too, ready to embark on a similar path?