China shores up ties with Africa despite slowing economy and friction over debt

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is using a three-day summit with African leaders this week to solidify political and economic ties with the continent, despite tensions over debt, several years of declining financing and broader concerns over China’s economy.

Xi’s call for solidarity and cooperation between developing countries is familiar, but he made it with greater urgency this week, citing a global “transformation unseen in a century”—a favored catchphrase signaling the rise of a multipolar world that the U.S.-led West no longer dominates.

His remarks came ahead of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, a regular summit that represents the first high level, in-person meeting between China and Africa since the pandemic. More than two dozen African leaders have made the trip to Beijing.

China has cast itself as a champion of developing countries, emphasizing the stability of its commitment and promoting its ideas of modernization, security and international relations. It has also sought African nations’ support for internationally contentious issues such as the status of Taiwan.

The African continent represents 54 votes at the United Nations and China recognizes that having the backing of so many countries looks good on the international stage, said Hannah Ryder, chief executive of Development Reimagined, an Africa-focused consulting firm.

Many African leaders and citizens have been receptive to Beijing’s messaging and see China as a role model for its economic development and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. A Pew survey in 2024 found that the majority of respondents in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa thought China and its companies had a positive impact on their economy.

At the same time, high global interest rates and a longer-term decline in Western development aid have left many African countries with few alternatives to more Chinese funding. African leaders “want more engagement, not less,” said Ryder.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, whose country has little Chinese debt but is Beijing’s largest trading partner in Africa, expressed admiration for Shenzhen’s transformation into a global technology hub during a visit to the Chinese city on Tuesday ahead of the summit.

“As South Africa, we have important lessons to learn from Shenzhen,” Ramaphosa told local business leaders. “As we work to develop our economy, we value advice, support and technical assistance in planning, infrastructure and skills development.”

China is Africa’s largest bilateral trade partner, with trade volumes reaching a historic high of $282 billion in 2023, up from $12 billion at the turn of the millennium.

But the balance is skewed toward China, for whom Africa makes up less than 5% of its global trade. While manufactured goods dominate China’s $173 billion in exports to Africa, the majority of Africa’s $109 billion in exports to China are commodities, including the minerals and metals needed for clean energy technologies such as batteries.

Analysts say that the trade deficit could grow in the short term, as Chinese manufacturers—now faced with a slowing economy at home and Western tariffs on electric vehicles, steel and other products—are looking to expand exports to middle-income and emerging countries.

Some fear that efforts to unload some of China’s excess capacity could undermine African nations’ bid to move up the value chain from exporting raw materials to making finished goods. Some governments on the continent are exploring steps to keep more processing at home.

In a meeting with Xi on Monday, Ramaphosa said South Africa, a major exporter of gold, platinum and manganese, wanted to narrow its trade deficit with China and change the structure of the two countries’ commerce. “We urge for more sustainable manufacturing and job-creating investments,” he said.

South Africa’s neighbor Zimbabwe last year imposed export bans on unprocessed lithium, effectively forcing Chinese companies to refine lithium there.

Xi said China is heeding these demands and told Ramaphosa that Beijing would accelerate its vocational training programs and offer more scholarships to South African students. China is already the second-most popular higher education destination for Africans after France and ahead of the U.S.

In recent years Chinese officials have rejected claims by Western governments that infrastructure loans under the Belt and Road Initiative pushed African nations into a “debt trap,” pointing to the debts the same countries took on by selling bonds to Wall Street investors. Nevertheless, Chinese state banks have cut back on lending to governments on the continent amid worries about the risk to their balance sheets from more African governments defaulting on their debts.

Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center says Chinese loans to African nations ticked up to around $4.6 billion in 2023, the first increase since 2016. But lending remains at less than a third of where it was in 2017 and 2018 after Beijing called for smaller, more strategic projects.

Over the past year, Chinese banks have agreed with other international creditors to restructure loans to Zambia, Ghana and Ethiopia under a new debt-relief process set up by the Group of 20 nations. The so-called Common Framework requires governments to first negotiate debt write-downs with their government creditors and then seek comparable concessions from private creditors—including international banks and bondholders.

Those deals came after years of delays that analysts say have likely put off other countries with high debts, including Kenya and Angola, from defaulting on their loans.

A test case for China’s new engagement in Africa could be the continent’s energy transition, including investments in large solar farms and other renewable energy projects. In addition to reducing the use of fossil fuels, they could help bring electricity to millions of people who are currently off the grid.

Most of those projects would be headed by private companies that could compensate for a fall in public financing, said Tang Xiaoyang, an international relations professor and member of the China Forum at Tsinghua University.

The Biden administration has sought to step up its involvement in Africa, including by pledging billions of dollars in investments in infrastructure projects, such as the Lobito Corridor, a railway line that traverses Angola from the Atlantic Ocean to the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

So far, however, efforts to increase America’s presence have been mixed. In 2023, the U.S. said it had closed deals worth an estimated $14.2 billion in trade and investment with African countries. But between 2021 and 2024, Washington also suspended a record eight African countries from the U.S. trade preference program, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, citing violations of human rights and democratic principles.

The U.S. is currently lagging behind China and India as the continent’s third trading partner, with the value of goods exchanged amounting to $67.5 billion in 2023, down more than half since 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Ryder from Development Re-Imagined argues that Africa’s need for development is so big that it shouldn’t have to pick between joining with China and the U.S. Both countries could, for example, team up as financiers and developers of renewable energy projects, she said.

“African leaders don’t want to choose between two superpowers,” she said. “They want to develop.”

Write to Sha Hua at sha.hua@wsj.com and Gabriele Steinhauser at Gabriele.Steinhauser@wsj.com