FOCAC 2024: Advancing African interests beyond the Africa-China summit

The ninth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), held in Beijing from September 4 to 6, comes at a crucial time. African economies are still reeling from the instability caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and anger is growing over the economic consequences of unsustainable debt, including through popular protests. Young people are demanding fairness, justice and transparency, especially in African governments' dealings with external powers. Governments are also under pressure to honour their commitments to move their economies up the value chain and shift their focus from aid to trade. The Dakar Action Plan (2022-2024), the outcome of the eighth FOCAC summit held in Dakar, Senegal, in November 2021, provides a comprehensive plan for trade promotion and facilitation, strategic market access, and product valorization. China has committed to importing $300 billion worth of goods from Africa between 2022 and 2024. It has also offered $10 billion to improve the quality of African exports and a $10 billion cred it line to help small and medium-sized enterprises export high-quality products to Chinese markets. Yet monitoring these commitments is difficult, and it is unclear whether or when these targets will be met. While FOCAC has become a unique forum, it remains largely shaped by donor-recipient dynamics, with African countries typically relegated to the background while China takes the lead on much of the agenda. This is partly due to weaknesses in strategic planning on the African side. While China regularly publishes comprehensive Africa strategy documents - such as the 2006, 2015, and 2021 white papers - African countries have little coherent strategy for China. China developed its China-Africa Cooperation Vision 2035 shortly after the Dakar summit. Developed with input from African countries, the document incorporates priorities from the African Union (AU) Agenda 2063, including development partnerships, trade and investment, green growth, human resource development, and industrialization. Interestingly, Af rican countries did not draft their own document articulating Africa's interests and detailing how the China-Africa Vision 2035 could advance their national development plans. China, on the other hand, is very clear about its goals. The China-Africa Vision 2035 is aligned with China's Vision 2035 , which aims to consolidate its great power status. A careful reading of both documents shows that China views its engagement with African countries as a means to advance its quest for great power status, a means to an end. FOCAC - and China-Africa policy more generally - is often criticized for its overly authoritarian orientation and its excessive focus on state-to-state relations. Much of FOCAC takes place out of public view and beyond the reach of independent experts. This excludes many important African stakeholders. It also prevents effective oversight. This is one reason why FOCAC's results are difficult to quantify, track, evaluate, and improve. African citizens are increasingly calling on African governmen ts to address these and other shortcomings to ensure that ordinary Africans get the most out of an initiative that likes to present itself as a model of 'win-win cooperation.' A process rather than a series of ad hoc summits The FOCAC summit meets once every three years, alternating between China and Africa. The only other African summit with external actors that meets regularly is the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), which has also met eight times since its inception. The ninth FOCAC will use a slightly different structure than previous ones, as it will be organized around thematic committees co-chaired by China and an African country. Chinese representation will most likely come from China's FOCAC Follow-up Committee, which is comprised of 37 Chinese agencies. The FOCAC meeting culminates a sequence of agenda-setting engagements, starting with the African diplomatic corps in Beijing, a senior officials' meeting to develop proposals, a ministerial conference to refine them, an d finally the FOCAC summit. A China-Africa Entrepreneurs Forum for African private sector leaders will be part of FOCAC this time. Several related meetings have been held ahead of the summit, including the China-Africa Economic and Trade Cooperation Forum in March 2024 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. African countries including Kenya, Namibia and Uganda have also held their own investment forums to promote opportunities to Chinese investors ahead of the summit. This year's FOCAC was also preceded by the China-Africa Think Tank Forum in April 2024, also in Dar es Salaam, and the Second High-level Conference of the Forum on Global Action for Shared Development in Beijing in July. FOCAC conducts most of its activities through thematic and technical sub-forums , such as the China-Africa Peace and Security Forum, the Forum on China-Africa Local Government Cooperation, and the China-Africa Legal Forum . The China-Africa Peace and Security Fund channels Chinese funding and equipment to the African Peace and Security Architecture, while the China-Africa Ministerial Forum on Health Cooperation makes Chinese health expertise available to African ministries of health. Some of these sub-forums have achieved significant milestones since the 8th FOCAC Forum. The China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo (CAETE) opened up new trade between African countries and Chinese cities and municipalities , resulting in 74 cooperation projects. This contributed to the robust China-Africa trade portfolio of $282 billion by 2023. Under this programme, Kenya became the largest African exporter of flowers to China, valued at over $800 million annually. African countries have also benefited from CAETE's promotion of online shopping platforms. In January 2022, for example, 11,000 bags of Ethiopian coffee were sold in 5 seconds through these platforms. Rwanda, Mauritius and other African countries have followed suit and used similar platforms to capture niche markets. Overall, FOCAC offers lessons to other external actors engaged in Africa in terms of the regularity of its summits, institutional organization in different areas of cooperation, technical and political coordination between summits and innovation. FOCAC, however, continues to generate controversy. For starters, it is seen as primarily serving Chinese interests. Take the China-Africa Think Tank Forum, for example. Its 'Dar es Salaam Consensus,' a document released in April 2024 to influence the upcoming agenda of the ninth FOCAC, commits member think tanks, academics, and research organizations to upholding and implementing the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative , two Chinese national security concepts. The meeting was silent on key African demands such as the 2005 Ezulwini Consensus , which among other things calls for permanent African representation on the United Nations Security Council. China's engagements in Africa have also drawn criticism in recent years for adding to the continent's debt burden. Chinese lending to Africa increased fivefold to $696 bil lion between 2000, when FOCAC was created, and 2020. Chinese lenders now account for 12% of Africa's public and private debt, making China a central player in the debate over African debt sustainability and responsible borrowing. China, however, tends not to consider debt cancellation or forgiveness, as highly indebted countries such as Angola, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zambia have discovered. FOCAC also remains very regime-centric. It thus lacks broad-based consultation and public engagement. The creation of sub-forums for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the China-Africa Press Center and the China-Africa People's Forum has not solved this problem, as participants are rigorously selected by government and ruling party officials. In fact, the government's allocation of Chinese conference and training opportunities is, in many ways, part of the largesse distributed within the ruling parties' patronage structures. Strengthening Africa's autonomy FOCAC's reliance on state-to-state dialogue persists de spite the expansion of expertise among academics, think tanks, and civil society on Africa-China relations. Independent African voices are weighing in on debates on China-Africa policy, particularly within the AU, which remains open to seeking outside perspectives. The non-profit China-Global South Project hosts weekly podcasts with leading opinion leaders to discuss relevant Africa-China policy issues. Meanwhile, the Africa-China Reporting Project works to improve the quality of reporting on China-Africa relations. The Afro-China Center for International Relations and the Development Reimagined research centers both monitor and interrogate the FOCAC process. In addition, the independent Africa-China Scholars Working Group brings together top scholars and practitioners to explore new ways of thinking about China-Africa relations and shape African strategies. Source: Africa News Agency