How to Approach China?

A new tally by the African Center for Strategic Studies finds that Chinese firms now hold stakes in more than a quarter of Africa's commercial ports. From West Africa's booming shipping corridors to key East African transit hubs, China's presence—whether as financier, builder, or operator—has become an infrastructural fact. In places like Nigeria's Lekki Deep Sea Port, Chinese capital and logistics expertise dominate the entire development process, compressing what might otherwise be fragmented procurement into a single, vertically integrated enterprise. The concern, at least for those observing from Washington, is that these investments offer China more than just economic returns. They provide footholds—nodes in a growing lattice of influence that some analysts insist is as much about military positioning as it is about trade.

But to see Africa's ports through the prism of US paranoia is to miss the broader question. The issue is not simply how much leverage China has accrued, or what strings might one day be pulled from Beijing. Rather, it is whether African states possess a coherent framework for interpreting and responding to China's rise—not in reaction to the latest op-ed in Foreign Affairs magazine, but as part of a long-term strategic vision rooted in the continent's developmental aims.

This is not an easy proposition. On the one hand, the crudeness of US foreign policy under Trump, particularly on climate, makes China appear—at least by comparison—like the only adult left in the room. As Adam Tooze recently argued, with the US again embracing fossil fuel maximalism and sabotaging multilateral climate efforts, it falls to China to lead on decarbonization. The world's largest emitter also happens to be the global leader in renewable infrastructure, electric vehicles, and green supply chains. There is a real sense that China's trajectory, more than any other, will determine whether the planetary threshold of 1.5 degrees is overshot.

But this, too, invites caution. The same China praised for building solar plants is simultaneously burning more coal than the rest of the world combined. A recent piece in Foreign Policy by Seaver Wang and Vijay Ramachandran makes the point starkly: even if China's emissions peak this year and fall steadily to zero by 2060, it will likely consume the entire global carbon budget for a 66 percent chance of hitting the 1.5-degree target. In other words, China's green revolution may be impressive in relative terms, but it is not yet sufficient in absolute ones. And it is precisely this contradiction—between the image of leadership and the material realities of Chinese fossil dependence—that ought to give African observers pause.

Too often, debates about China in Africa fall into two unhelpful camps. On one side are those who reduce Chinese involvement to neocolonial land grabs, debt traps, and authoritarian export. On the other are those so eager to escape the tutelage of Western donors that they romanticize China as a benevolent alternative. Both positions misunderstand what is actually happening on the ground. China's presence in Africa is neither master-planned nor ideologically rigid. As Xiaoyang Tang argues in his book Coevolutionary Pragmatism—a perspective he shared with me on the AIAC podcast many moons ago—Chinese development in Africa is better understood as improvisational, relational, and deeply shaped by local conditions. It is as much about trial and error as it is about top-down planning. To speak of "China" in the singular is to erase the heterogeneity of actors, incentives, and outcomes that define this complex engagement.

If Tang reveals the diversity and dynamism of China's presence, Ken Opalo offers a sobering counterpart: what matters just as much as China's intent is Africa's strategic capacity. Opalo's argument, in a Substack piece from late last year that's worth reading, is that China presents a model of deliberate structural transformation, not because of its autocratic system, but because of its commitment to building a capable developmental state. In his analysis, China puts the option of modernization on the table in a way few other partners do. But whether that option is taken up—whether it becomes the foundation for African modernity rather than just another round of extractive dependency—depends on African political will, institutional vision, and policy ambition. Without a clear sense of destination, it is easy to drift.

This is the deeper danger: that Africa, in the name of pragmatism, forgets to ask what it wants. I remember feeling a pang of jealousy when Peru unveiled a $3.5 billion, Chinese-backed port in Chancay during APEC last year. My exact words to my colleague Boima Tucker were, "Honestly, ready for South Africa to twerk for China." But envy is not a development strategy. Nor is the passive reception of foreign infrastructure, however gleaming, a substitute for national planning. The real challenge is not how to attract Chinese investment. It is how to shape it—to channel external capital in ways that reinforce, rather than distort, a domestically grounded vision of transformation.

All of this points to the need for Africa to think strategically, not reactively. This does not mean aligning with Washington or Beijing. It means refusing to let either define the terms. It means seeing China not as a savior or a threat, but as a complicated, instructive example. And it means cultivating the political, intellectual, and institutional capacity to make demands of the future, rather than merely adjusting to its arrival.

Because in the end, the tragedy would not be choosing the wrong partner. The tragedy would be not having a project of our own.

By Will Shoki,

Editor, Africa Is a Country.

Courtesy: Africa is a Country