Facing heat from Western countries who are ramping up investments in Africa and amid growing geopolitical rivalry with the West, China is now focussing on “smaller” infrastructure projects in a departure from its traditional massive infrastructure ones, as per a report in the Voice of America. The US news outlet cited experts to state that Beijing which is fighting an economic slowdown of its own is reacting to increased competition in the African region.

At this year’s Forum on Africa-China Cooperation, an event held every three years, China’s President Xi Jinping pledging USD 51 billion in financial support for Africa over the next three years. Positioning China as a fellow developing country in contrast to the West’s colonialist past, President Xi Jinping told the African leaders that “the China-Africa relationship is now at its best in history.”

“Modernization is an inalienable right of all countries,” Xi said in his opening speech to over 50 African leaders. “But the Western approach to it has inflicted immense sufferings on developing countries.” Lucas Engel, an analyst with the Global China Initiative at Boston University, told the Voice of America that China is reacting to increased competition in the region.

“Xi’s reminder of the ‘immense suffering’ inflicted on Africa by the West in his keynote speech this year is a sharper rebuke of Africa’s Western partners than we’ve seen in the past,” Engel said. “It is likely that China is feeling the heat as Western partners ramp up cooperation with Africa.” The theme of FOCAC 2024 was “joining hands to promote modernization,” he added.

The analysts were expecting China to focus on green technology and the green energy transition, agricultural modernization and trade, and education and training. Although, the money announced by Beijing was over USD 40 billion pledged at the last FOCAC, in 2021, but still fell short of previous pledges, such as the USD 60 billion earmarked for Africa in 2018 and 2015.

Notably, China has been seen to be moving away from the massive infrastructure projects of the early years of Xi’s trademark Belt and Road Initiative and towards what it has dubbed “small is beautiful projects,” VOA reported. Some of the announcements made at FOCAC, however, surprised analysts by bucking that trend.

Xi announced China would be undertaking a USD 1 billion upgrade of the TAZARA railway, which will link mineral-rich, landlocked Zambia with Tanzania’s coast. “There was already a sense that infrastructure would be one of those asks that would not be entertained by the Chinese side, so I think that has come as a bit of a surprise,” Paul Nantulya, a research associate with the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, told VOA.

“I think African countries were also quite concerned about infrastructure financing…Now it seems like the Chinese side may have finally backed down,” said Nantulya, who was in Beijing for FOCAC. “That would indicate that China does not want to be locked out of the infrastructure game, given what the U.S. is doing with the Lobito Corridor.”

Nantulya was referring to the G7-backed strategic economic corridor that Washington says is designed to create jobs and enhance export potential for resource-rich Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia. The US recently announced it could extend the railway to Tanzania and on to the Indian Ocean. This is the first big infrastructure project in Africa undertaken by Washington in a generation. 

“China’s offer to refurbish the TAZARA railway connecting copper-rich Zambia with Tanzania on Africa’s eastern coast appears to be a direct answer to the Western-led Lobito Corridor,” said Engel. However, China was not the only country with an agenda at FOCAC, as African leaders also laid out their priorities for relations with their largest trading partner, VOA reported.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who leads the continent’s most developed economy, had his primary aim at reducing a long-standing trade imbalance and to get China to import more agricultural products. He also wants to see more value-added exports made in South Africa. Notably, ahead of the FOCAC, Ramaphosa had went on a state visit to China, where he made several announcements, including that South Africa would sign up for China’s Beidou satellite navigation system and inviting Chinese electric vehicle company BYD to use South Africa as a manufacturing hub.

Xi said China would in turn expand market access to African agricultural products and exempt 33 countries from import tariffs. He also announced that China would support 60,000 vocational training opportunities for Africans. Nantulya pointed out that there seemed to be a lot of attention to detail regarding this year’s announcements.

“What that tells me is that the Chinese side has been responding to the African side,” he said. “You know, the African delegates are very mindful of the fact that one of the big criticisms of FOCAC is that it’s very high on pledges and very low on actual concrete tasks.” Yunnan Chen, a researcher at London-based research group ODI, believes that the pledged areas of cooperation spanned almost every sector.

“I think what’s interesting to note about them is this very striking emphasis on areas of technological cooperation — in industry, in agriculture, in science and technology,” she told VOA. “There’s a lot of emphasis on training and initiatives that would support knowledge transfer from China to African parties, and I think this is something that’s been very much an African demand for many years,” she added.

“Even though we have seen a decline in Chinese financing in Africa and we know that China is experiencing a lot of domestic financial troubles, there’s still a very clear and very emphatic political commitment,” she said. Aside from Ramaphosa’s trade demands, other African leaders who held bilateral meetings with Xi had specific areas of concern, as reported by VOA.

Infrastructure was at the top of the list of Kenyan President William Ruto. He asked Beijing to fund an extension of Kenya’s Chinese-built Standard Gauge Railway. It marked a sharp change from Ruto’s campaign rhetoric, in which he criticized his predecessor’s policy of taking Chinese loans. Ruto made the request even though Kenya is heavily in debt to Western financial institutions such as the IMF and lenders such as China and has been experiencing violent anti-government protests.

Other key areas of cooperation announced at the conclusion of FOCAC included the military and security sectors. Beijing vowed to allocate around USD 140 million in military assistance grants alongside training programs for thousands of military personnel from across the continent, VOA reported. Another focus was green energy, with Xi announcing that China would launch 30 new clean energy projects on the continent.