Leaders from China and Africa flocked to Beijing last week for the ninth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. Established in 2000 and held every three years, the forum now encompasses 53 nations and is China’s largest diplomatic event. For the United States, too, it is a reminder of Beijing’s growing global clout, particularly in Africa and the broader Global South — a sphere for which Washington seems to lack a coherent strategy.
Such neglect is troubling. When it comes to Africa, not only is China the continent’s largest trading partner, top creditor, and a key source of infrastructure investment, but it has also begun to emerge as a lead guarantor of regional security. In the absence of a sound U.S.-Africa policy, such a shift threatens U.S. interests in Africa, the neighboring Middle East, and along critical maritime routes. For Beijing, Africa is a key node in its plan for a new global security order, crafted for its “national rejuvenation.”
On his five-nation Africa tour in January, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi touted Beijing’s commitment to “China-Africa military education” as a strategic priority. Each year, thousands of African military officers are trained in academies across China, many from former liberation states such as Algeria, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and South Africa — nations with which China has a shared legacy of anticolonialism and Marxist-Leninist ideals.
During the Algerian War, for instance, China supplied the National Liberation Front with arms — 13,000 tons of weapons arrived in July 1959 alone — and was the first non-Arab nation to recognize Algeria’s provisional government in 1962. China also armed Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union, a precursor to his ZANU-PF party, in its struggle against white Rhodesia and provided arms and military training to South Africa’s African National Congress.
Such training centered on protracted warfare, military planning, and political struggle. Some things, it seems, never do change. At the People’s Liberation Army Command College, among China’s leading military academies, African students today learn modern Chinese military doctrine; Xi Jinping Thought; Chinese history and culture, as interpreted by the Chinese Communist Party, no doubt; and Beijing’s conceptions of global security, as now outlined in its Global Security Initiative, drafted in 2022.
Graduates of the college include 10 acting African chiefs of staff — Nigerian Gen. Christoper Musa, chief of the country’s defense staff, studied at China’s more strategic National Defense University — eight defense ministers, the former presidents of Tanzania, Namibia, Guinea-Bissau, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the current presidents of Eritrea and Zimbabwe.
Beijing is not alone in its efforts. Through the Defense Department and its agencies, the U.S. also trains African militaries both on the continent and stateside, with initiatives such as the African Partnership Flight, hosted by the Air Force, and the International Military Education and Training program. For now, China’s military education efforts still lag behind those of Washington and its allies, France and the United Kingdom. Yet, the gap is rapidly closing — especially as growing anti-Western sentiment erodes such traditional alliances, as with the ousters of France and the U.S. from Niger.
Part of the problem is likely in the ideas promoted. While Beijing’s instruction often revolves around modernization and strategies aimed at crafting a “new world order … that will surpass and supplant the Westphalian system,” as Chinese President Xi Jinping has said, the Biden administration has increasingly woven diversity, equity, and inclusion into its training programs, much as it has in the U.S. military. Yet DEI does not address the defense needs of African governments grappling with Islamic terrorism or civil wars. Neither does it resonate in a region where Christianity and Islam are predominant, and with whose beliefs DEI conflicts.
It is, therefore, hardly surprising that South Africa, for instance, once a darling of Washington and the West, has recently pivoted toward Beijing. In February 2023, its navy joined China and Russia for a 10-day joint exercise in the Indian Ocean. Earlier this year, it again joined forces with China, Russia, and Iran for Marine Security Belt 2024, a five-day naval and air drill in the Gulf of Oman. While the official aim was to boost maritime security and cooperation, the exercise was effectively a show of regional strength and a signal to the West of the rise of a counter-strategic military coalition that also includes alleged Western partners.
More than 60% of Africans seem to have a positive view of such Sino-African defense cooperation and of China’s expanding defense and security footprint on the continent. Beyond its military training programs, Beijing also provides training for local law enforcement, having trained more than 2,000 African police between 2018 and 2021. In Kenya, around 400 officers from its General Service Unit, an elite paramilitary division of the Kenya Police Service, receive annual training in China. Officers from the Kenya Police Airwing, specializing in reconnaissance and surveillance, are instructed at the Chinese military’s Civil Aviation University.
No doubt, normative considerations are hardly the primary drivers of such generally favorable views or the willingness of African security and defense forces to partner with China. Chinese military training is often bundled within broader deals that include arms sales, infrastructure, and educational initiatives, all offered at cut prices. For example, a 2023 defense deal with Zimbabwe involved $28 million in military equipment — sniper rifles, armored vehicles, personnel carriers — along with training on how to use it and funding for Zimbabwe’s National Defence University, built in 2012 with a $98 million loan from China and secured against Zimbabwe’s diamond reserves.
China has now overtaken Russia as Africa’s top arms supplier, with Russian exports to the continent having declined by 44% between 2019 and 2023 compared to the preceding four years.
For Beijing, this strategy of arming local defense forces while instilling them with its military and political doctrines allows it to cultivate a network of military and security personnel broadly sympathetic to its strategic interests and equipped to, so it hopes, possibly defend and secure them. Since 2021, for example, an agreement has been in place whereby Chinese-trained Ethiopian forces protect Belt and Road projects in Ethiopia. The protection of Chinese security interests in Africa has also been featured in every FOCAC strategic plan since 2013. This year is no different.
China pursues similar strategies across Latin America, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific. The aim is the establishment of a new and enduring global security order fashioned in its image. This is why, as Wang and other Chinese officials have noted, overseas military education is among Beijing’s top foreign policy priorities.
Meanwhile, Washington’s Africa priorities are muddled at best. Recent efforts have rightly focused on efforts to counter China, though they have offered little that is concrete. U.S. training programs tend to operate in isolation rather than as part of comprehensive packages that could provide cash-strapped African countries with greater value. Weapons assistance, too, is frequently tied to DEI initiatives pushed under the guise of human rights. In key nations such as Niger and Chad, the U.S. is withdrawing military assets.
China, on the other hand, is reportedly considering a new naval base on Africa’s Atlantic coast to complement its existing one in Djibouti, situated where the Gulf of Aden meets the Red Sea.
Among American and Western audiences, China’s ties to Africa are often portrayed as esoteric, too distant to merit concern, or solely centered on securing access to markets and resources. Such portrayals miss the mark. At the heart of Beijing’s Africa strategy is a deliberate focus on Chinese security, as defined by the CCP. All other initiatives, including those showcased at this year’s FOCAC, are directed toward this end, with implications that extend beyond Africa and the Global South to the free world.
Imagine, for instance, a scenario in which U.S. military assets are besieged in a vital waterway off the African coast. China, having fortified its naval presence in the region, imposes a blockade to prevent reinforcements. Meanwhile, coastal African nations, aligned with Beijing’s strategic ambitions and schooled in its military methods, rally in China’s support. This isn’t fantasy. It is, in part, the reality currently playing out in the Red Sea.
American officials may soon want to rethink some things.