African countries want China to shift its focus from building infrastructure on the continent to local industrialization, China’s top Africa diplomat said at a briefing on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in South Africa in late August. “African integration is already escalating and many African countries [have] asked China to consider [a] shift [of] our focus,” said Wu Peng, director-general of the Chinese foreign ministry’s department of African affairs.
Wu said the change was needed especially considering the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), which was launched at the start of 2021 and is intended to enable African countries to trade tariff-free in future.
Between 2000 and 2020, Chinese lenders – mostly state-owned banks – agreed to lend $160 billion to African countries, according to Boston University.
Loan commitments soared after Xi launched the “Belt and Road Initiative” in 2013 to fund infrastructure in developing countries, but then dropped sharply from a peak of $28.4 billion in 2016 to $1.9 billion in 2020.
Wu also said that investments by Chinese companies in Africa, especially from small and medium-sized companies, would increase.
“No matter what happens about the global economy, or Chinese economy, the trend in the relatively midterm or long range, [is that] Chinese companies are willing to take some risk [to] go into Africa,” Wu added.