The View | Why China is much more to Africa than development ATM

At the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing last week, China pledged 360 billion yuan (US$50 billion) worth of support to Africa. Perhaps more important than the scale is the evolving nature of such contributions.

China is diversifying its African lending from energy and infrastructure mega projects to smaller projects in green energy and industrial initiatives. Instead of construction and financing, where China can bring the greatest impact, Africa will increasingly turn to Beijing for knowledge and industrial resources.

Foreign powers have long been interested in Africa’s natural resources. However, resources are susceptible to elite capture and are seldom a basis for building a broad-based middle class or path to sustainable national prosperity.

Equatorial Guinea, with its high oil reserves and small population, once had the highest per-capita GDP in continental Africa, a position it no longer holds with declining oil and gas production. With high inequality and widespread poverty, the central African country’s fading oil fortunes only enriched the few. Zimbabwe might have large lithium reserves, but it is Morocco which is leveraging its phosphate resources for industrialising in the battery value chain.