The tradition has lasted for thirty-three years already. Like every January since 1991, the Chinese foreign minister will make his first tour of the year to Africa.
More than the choice of countries visited and the content of the announcements, the strength of the symbol takes precedence. That of an unwavering link with a continent forming the hard core of this “global South” of which Beijing readily poses as leader. Behind the carefully oiled diplomatic ritual, however, a change of era can be discerned: after more than twenty years of activism which placed the former Middle Kingdom in a situation of economic hegemony south of the Sahara, the dynamic is beginning to change. settle down.
The China-Africa relationship is ” at the crossroads “noted the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a note published in October 2023. A trend illustrated by the sudden drop in official Chinese loans granted to sub-Saharan countries.
In 2022, according to the Global China Initiative at Boston University, these have not even reached 1 billion dollars (920 million euros), for the first time in eighteen years. Chinese disbursements now represent only a fraction of the amounts provided in 2016, the year of the peak, at 28.4 billion dollars (26.98 billion euros in December 2016).
Another clue: during the China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo held in the Chinese province of Hunan in June 2023, projects were signed for some $10 billion, half as much as at the last show, in 2019. “The time of easy money is over”confirms Thierry Vircoulon, associate researcher at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).
The signal for this new sobriety was given at the end of 2021 in Dakar, Senegal, during the Forum on Sino-African Cooperation (Focac). At the end of this high mass organized every three years since the year 2000, Beijing had significantly reduced its financial support.
Inner difficulties
This weighting finds its origin in the internal difficulties of a China which is slowing down. Overtaken by the real estate crisis, youth unemployment and the drop in exports, the world’s second largest economy is converting to budgetary realism. The entire flagship project of Chinese President Xi Jinping, the “new Silk Roads”, is affected by this: ten years after its launch, ambitions are being scaled back almost everywhere.
While state reserves are dwindling, Beijing does not want to find itself trapped by insolvent debts among its partners. Including in Africa, where China has become the main bilateral creditor of a handful of countries like Zambia, Ethiopia and Kenya, some of which are now in default or on the path to over-indebtedness.
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