Tribune. China has become, since the beginning of the 2010s, the first trading partner and the first builder of Africa. But also its first lessor. Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Trade Qian Keming said, according to the Senegalese daily The sun November 29, that from January to September 2021, China-Africa trade reached 185.2 billion dollars (164.05 billion euros approximately), up 38.2% year-on-year.
The total loans granted by China to sub-Saharan countries between 2003 and 2019 amounted to 131 billion dollars with, however, a fall in investments even before the Covid-19 pandemic. From 35 billion dollars in 2013, these investments fell to 30 billion in 2015, 25 billion in 2019 and 7 billion in 2020. They were mainly directed towards the countries producing oil, gas and mineral materials.
In 2021, Chinese public and private companies are present in all areas, from forestry to banking to energy. This breakthrough, which largely contributed to the growth that the continent experienced between 2000 and 2013, however, has had deleterious effects.
Between 2000 and 2018, fifty out of fifty-four African countries borrowed $ 132 billion from China, 80% of which from the Exim Bank of China and the China Development Bank (CDB), in various forms. In 2018, China held nearly 21% of the continent’s external public debt outstanding, a large part of these loans financing infrastructure of questionable relevance.
Moratoriums
China is thus the leading bilateral donor to Djibouti, of which it holds 58% of the external debt, Angola (58%), Zimbabwe (54%), Guinea (46%), Cameroon (45%) ), the Democratic Republic of Congo (43%), Ethiopia (42%), Uganda (42%) or Kenya (38%). In Kenya, the debt to China has reached $ 7 billion, including $ 3.5 billion for the Nairobi-Mombasa rail line alone. The project of a leaseback of the port of Mombasa to China, mentioned after the threat of a debt default, was singled out by the country’s national auditor, before being denied in
December 2018 by the government under pressure from public opinion.
As early as 2020, several African countries turned to the Chinese government to ask for a moratorium, or even cancellation, of part of their debt. Thus, Angola, whose Chinese debt reaches about 20 billion dollars, and Kenya obtained a moratorium, respectively of three years and six months.
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