The News
Chinese officials promised to encourage the country’s most “powerful” companies to invest in Nigeria following Xi Jinping’s meeting with Nigerian leader Bola Tinubu in Beijing.
Tinubu, in turn, agreed to let Chinese factories open in the West African country, and for China to develop its mineral and energy resources.
In a joint statement, the leaders said the investment would help Nigeria’s economy — which is enduring its worst crisis in a generation — to “diversify” from its dependency on oil, including by investing in Nigeria’s military technology, and intelligence.
The talks were held ahead of the ninth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, which China hopes to use to build itself up as a natural leader and economic partner of Global South countries as an alternative to the US and its allies.
SIGNALS
Chinese investment deepens influence over one of Africa’s biggest economies
Nigeria is already a major benefactor of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a major prong of Beijing’s push to exert its global influence through physical infrastructure and financing. China has built a deep sea port and new railroad lines in the West African nation, with potential for more projects around clean energy generation given Nigeria’s chronic electricity shortages. “Africa’s share of China’s total new energy exports remains very small,” a professor of international relations at Tsinghua University told The Washington Post. “China views the African market as still being in a relatively early stage,” he said. Still, China is Nigeria’s biggest bilateral lender, totaling $5 billion at the end of March, according to Nigeria’s Debt Management office.
Chinese lending sees a surge across Africa
China committed $4.6 billion in new loans to African countries in 2023 in the lead-up to this year’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. That’s still less than half of what was annually committed between 2013 and 2018, according to Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center’s data, but it’s an increase from 2022. Beijing also unveiled plans to revitalize an aging railway aimed at improving transportation in resource-rich East Africa, as well as develop bilateral trade agreements with South Africa. The uptick in loans could help bolster the continent’s potential as a growing and sustainable market for China, amid what the country’s foreign minister has described as “hegemonic bullying” by the US in the form of tariffs and trade sanctions.