Africa is becoming the battleground for another Cold War. The old Cold War, from 1947 to 1991, was between the United States and the Soviet Union. The emerging “new” Cold War is between the US and China. However, just like the old Cold War, which turned Africa into a battleground in the US-USSR fight for influence, the new Cold War is also dragging Africa into the fray, as the US and China vie to become the dominant power on the continent!
The US believes China is trapping Africa in debt and using the continent to pursue global dominance
From the West’s perspective, the old Cold War was mainly predicated upon stopping the USSR from spreading the communist ideology across Africa. But the “new” Cold War is more than just preventing China from infusing African institutions with its development model, the “Beijing Consensus”; it’s also about stopping China from using its economic and technological clouts to achieve its undoubted global expansionist ambitions.
Truth is, China is gaining ground in Africa! Its money is funding huge infrastructures on the continent. African countries, particularly Nigeria, have also embraced China’s development model of state capitalism and debt-funded infrastructure projects. From 2000 to 2016, China lent about $125 billion to Africa, with President Xi Jinping pledging additional $60 billion in 2018, prompting concerns about debt-trap. China overtook the US as Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009; its trade with Africa is now more than 4 times that of the US. Furthermore, while the US is mobilising other Western countries against Huawei, the Chinese technology company, Huawei has no serious rival in Africa.
And the US is worried. It is worried about China’s growing strategic influence in Africa. Consequently, America’s relationship with Africa, particularly under President Trump, is viewed through the prism of China. As David Pilling, the Financial Times Africa Editor, wrote recently, “Under Donald Trump, the US has looked at Africa almost exclusively as the scene of a strategic and ideological battle with China.” The US believes China is trapping Africa in debt and using the continent to pursue global dominance. It is concerned that Africa is not wary of China’s “authoritarianism and empty promises”, as the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put it, but instead making itself a pawn in China’s expansionist agenda.
After opening a large COVID-19 testing centre with the involvement of Chinese firms and technology, the UAE, a traditional ally of the US, offered the US embassy hundreds of tests to screen its staff. But the US declined the offer. Why?
But if the US-China rivalry was intense before COVID-19, the pandemic has made it worse, and with it the pressure on Africa. For a start, the US blames China for COVID-19, which, indeed, started in Wuhan, China, and is appalled that China has used the pandemic to boost its reputation and influence in developing countries by portraying itself as their true friend and partner in a time of global crisis.
Of course, while other nations and foreign philanthropists have also supported Africa, China has been very good at promoting and publicising its interventions. For instance, the private donations made to African countries by Jack Ma, the co-founder of Alibaba, was seized on by the Chinese government as part of China’s humanitarian effort. President Xi Jinping also pledged $2 billion to help fight the pandemic in developing countries and promised that any vaccine developed in China would automatically be made available in Africa.
But critics have pointed out that China’s refusal to grant debt relief to Africa, despite the economic damage caused by the pandemic, and the appalling racist treatment of Africans in China, who were quarantined, harassed and humiliated as potential “carriers” of COVID-19 even when they proved negative for the virus, undermined China’s claim that it’s a genuine friend of the continent.
The US thinks so too and wants Africa to wean itself off China’s “pernicious” influence. And if Africa doesn’t, well, it might be forced, at least under Trump, to choose sides, just as developing countries were pressured to choose sides during the old Cold War. If you think that’s outlandish, the recent experience of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) shows it is not.
After opening a large COVID-19 testing centre with the involvement of Chinese firms and technology, the UAE, a traditional ally of the US, offered the US embassy hundreds of tests to screen its staff. But the US declined the offer. Why? Because of China’s involvement! Indeed, long before the coronavirus, the US had been warning the UAE that technological collaboration with China would have consequences. One UAE official told the Financial Times: “There is a sense of you are with us or against us in this Cold War.”
The “you are with us or against us” attitude is influencing America’s relationships with Africa and African-led institutions. In April, President Trump stopped the US’s $116 million annual contribution to the World Health Organisation after accusing it of bias towards China. He blamed the African president of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, an Ethiopian, for failing to expose China’s cover up of the coronavirus when it broke out in Wuhan, thereby allowing its spread worldwide. President Trump accused Dr Tedros of cosying up to China and being sympathetic to its views!
Earlier, the US had threatened to withdraw funding from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention because China had offered to pay for a new building. The plight of Dr Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank, who is under fire from the US, is also not unconnected with perceived Chinese influence, as the Trump administration believes the AfDB is following China’s development model and lax attitude of lending and debt.
So, Africa is again at the centre of superpower geopolitical tensions. As President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya said recently, US-China rivalry puts Africa at risk. But the rivalry will not go away because the battle is strategic and ideological. African countries must, therefore, manage their relationships with China and the US carefully.
Sadly, it’s a tough call. Both countries are too strategically and economically important to be ignored. Africa cannot avoid doing business with either. But, let’s face it, China does not offer Africa a better development path. Certainly, China’s development models of state capitalism and authoritarianism, as its current treatment of Hong Kong shows, are worse than the West’s models of democracy, rule of law and free market economy. Yet, Africa can’t simply kowtow to the US. It must identify and protect its best interests.
A pungent view on Nigeria’s unwieldy bureaucracy
A Lagos-based lawyer, who wants to be identified simply as OM, emailed me about last week’s column. I share her pungent views below:
“l read your excellent article on my pet subject: every word resonated. There are so many Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) Oronsaye didn’t touch that l encounter in my professional life as a lawyer representing the overburdened corporates in Nigeria. These MDAs were ostensibly created for the people, have remained in the statute books for decades and yet have no impact.
The Industrial Training Fund, ITF, is one. All companies must contribute a percentage of payroll to it, so it can train Nigerians. It’s about 40 years old. It got itself an amendment to expand its scope to capture more companies! So, any company that has revenues of up to N50m is caught (down from N500m)! I know a client who paid ITF over N650m in 2014! No one is trained. In recent years, its chair has distributed ‘starter packs’ for saloon/ hairdressers in a few state capitals, and recently it announced it will go into ‘large scale farming’!
The NYSC is another, the NSITF – l could go on and on! They all have a template: they engage little known consultants who go about threatening businesses to pay up on statutory contributions. Foreign-owned businesses are easy targets.
Nigeria is not working. l am in my 50s and full of regrets l didn’t secure foreign citizenship for my children when l could.
Thank you for shining a light on Nigeria’s dysfunctions.”