Forum on China–Africa Cooperation

Based on Wikipedia: Forum on China–Africa Cooperation

Every three years, something remarkable happens. Dozens of African heads of state—presidents, prime ministers, kings—travel to a single destination for a summit. In 2018, more African leaders attended this gathering than showed up at the United Nations General Assembly happening around the same time. The destination? Beijing. The occasion? The Forum on China–Africa Cooperation, known as FOCAC.

This is the story of how China built the largest coordinated relationship between any external power and the African continent, and why African nations have, for the most part, enthusiastically participated.

A Different Kind of Foreign Aid

To understand FOCAC, you first need to understand what it explicitly rejects.

For decades, Western foreign aid has come with conditions. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and bilateral aid from European and American governments typically require recipient countries to meet certain benchmarks. These might include democratic reforms, anti-corruption measures, privatization of state industries, or commitments to human rights standards. The idea, in theory, is that aid should help build better governance alongside better infrastructure.

China takes a fundamentally different approach. The only political condition it requires from aid recipients is adherence to the One China principle—that is, recognizing Beijing rather than Taipei as the legitimate government of China and acknowledging that Taiwan is part of China. Beyond that? Nothing.

No demands for democratic elections. No requirements to liberalize markets. No lectures about human rights.

This stance is rooted in what China calls its Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which date back to the 1950s: mutual respect for territory and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. These are, essentially, a conservative interpretation of Westphalian sovereignty—the idea that nation-states should be left alone to manage their own domestic affairs.

The FOCAC founding declaration makes China's critique of Western-style aid explicit:

Each country has the right to choose, in its course of development, its own social system, development model, and way of life in light of its national conditions. Moreover, the politicization of human rights conditionalities on economic assistance should be vigorously opposed to as they constitute a violation of human rights.

Read that last line again. China frames conditional aid not just as unhelpful, but as itself a violation of human rights.

Why African Leaders Like This Arrangement

Dawn C. Murphy, an American professor of International Security Studies, conducted extensive interviews with African scholars and diplomats about their views on Chinese engagement. Her conclusion? Many African countries genuinely appreciate China's stance.

This isn't hard to understand if you consider the history. Many African nations experienced colonialism within living memory. Their borders were drawn by European powers at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, dividing ethnic groups and combining rivals with little regard for local realities. After independence, they often found that economic relationships with former colonial powers came with political strings attached.

China offers something different: money without moralizing.

Whether this is good for African citizens—as opposed to African governments—is a separate question, one that generates intense debate. But the appeal to political leaders is clear. A government can receive Chinese loans to build a highway without having to release political prisoners, hold competitive elections, or answer uncomfortable questions about where the money actually goes.

The Birth of FOCAC

Interestingly, FOCAC was not purely a Chinese initiative. African diplomats had been urging Beijing to create such a forum throughout the late 1990s. China was becoming increasingly important as a trading partner and source of investment, and African nations wanted a more structured way to engage.

But China also had its own motivations. By 2000, when the first FOCAC ministerial conference was held in Beijing, the geopolitical landscape was shifting. The European Union had just held its first EU-Africa Summit. India was building its own Africa outreach. Turkey was doing the same. China didn't want to be left behind as other powers established formal channels to the continent.

There was also the matter of votes. The United Nations General Assembly operates on a one-country-one-vote basis, and Africa has 54 countries. For any nation seeking to shape international norms—whether on human rights, trade, or the status of Taiwan—African support is strategically valuable.

The first meeting brought together more than 80 ministers from China and 44 African countries. The guest list included President Gnassingbé Eyadéma of Togo, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, and the Secretary-General of the Organization of African Unity, the predecessor to today's African Union. From the Chinese side, the top leadership attended: General Secretary Jiang Zemin, Premier Zhu Rongji, and Vice President Hu Jintao, who would soon become China's paramount leader.

How FOCAC Actually Works

The forum meets every three years, alternating between China and an African host country. Each summit produces two main outputs: a declaration laying out shared principles, and a three-year action plan with specific commitments.

These aren't vague promises. China announces concrete figures: billions of dollars in loans, thousands of scholarships, hundreds of infrastructure projects. Then, over the following three years, these commitments are implemented through bilateral agreements between China and individual African countries.

This bilateral implementation is crucial. Although the African Union has been a member of FOCAC since 2012 and plays an increasing coordinating role, each African nation negotiates and implements projects separately with China. There is no unified African position, no collective bargaining. This gives China significant leverage—it can offer better terms to countries it favors and less generous packages to those it doesn't.

As of 2022, FOCAC includes 53 of Africa's 54 countries. The sole holdout is the Kingdom of Eswatini, the small landlocked nation formerly known as Swaziland, which maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan instead of the People's Republic of China. This makes Eswatini one of only a handful of countries worldwide that still recognize Taipei.

The Money Pipeline

The scale of Chinese financial commitments through FOCAC has grown dramatically over the years.

At the 2006 Beijing Summit, President Hu Jintao announced $5 billion in concessional loans. He also unveiled the China-Africa Development Fund, starting with $1 billion in capital with plans to grow to $5 billion. This fund makes equity investments in Chinese companies operating in Africa—not grants or loans, but actual ownership stakes in businesses.

By 2009, at the Sharm el-Sheikh conference in Egypt, Premier Wen Jiabao doubled the loan commitment to $10 billion. He added a special $1 billion loan facility specifically for small and medium-sized African businesses.

The 2012 Beijing meeting saw another doubling, to $20 billion in credit for infrastructure, agriculture, and manufacturing.

Then came Johannesburg in 2015. President Xi Jinping announced a $60 billion package. This included $5 billion in outright grants and interest-free loans, $35 billion in preferential loans and export credits, another $5 billion each for the China-Africa Development Fund and small business lending, and a new $10 billion production capacity cooperation fund.

The 2018 Beijing summit maintained the $60 billion headline figure, though with different components. Xi also announced emergency food aid for South Sudan during the summit—300 million yuan, plus another 100 million yuan, roughly $60 million total at exchange rates of the time.

Not Just Money

FOCAC commitments go well beyond financial transfers. The forum has become a vehicle for an extraordinarily wide range of cooperation.

Agriculture has been a consistent focus since 2003, when China announced it would eliminate tariffs on goods from the least developed African countries. At the 2006 summit, China announced the creation of Agricultural Technology Demonstration Centers across Africa. These centers serve a dual purpose: they transfer Chinese farming expertise to local communities while also creating market opportunities for Chinese agricultural companies. The number of these centers has grown over successive summits.

Education is another major area. China has steadily increased scholarships for African students. By 2012, it committed to providing 5,500 government scholarships annually, plus training for school principals, teachers, and 20,000 professionals across various fields.

Healthcare features prominently as well. Through FOCAC, China has built hospitals and malaria prevention centers across the continent, supplied medical equipment and antimalarial materials, and trained thousands of doctors and nurses.

Infrastructure, of course, is perhaps what China is best known for in Africa: roads, railways, ports, power plants. The 2009 summit announced 100 clean energy projects covering solar, biogas, and small hydropower.

Even cultural diplomacy has a place. The 2003 Addis Ababa conference was the first to emphasize cultural cooperation. By 2015, one of the outcomes was the Access to Satellite TV for 10,000 African Villages program, bringing Chinese television content to rural communities across the continent.

Security and the Belt and Road

The 2012 summit marked a shift in emphasis. For the first time, security cooperation and peacekeeping became major themes. China announced the Initiative on China-Africa Partnership for Peace and Security, providing financial and technical support to African Union peacekeeping missions. This was significant—China was moving beyond economic engagement into the realm of security, traditionally dominated by Western powers and the United Nations.

The 2015 Johannesburg summit introduced another major evolution: the explicit linkage of FOCAC to China's Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI. This massive infrastructure and investment program, launched by Xi Jinping in 2013, aims to connect Asia, Europe, and Africa through a network of ports, railways, roads, and other infrastructure. The 2015 FOCAC declaration committed participants to "explore the linkages" between Belt and Road and Africa's economic integration agenda.

By 2018, the connection was no longer exploratory. The summit declaration stated explicitly that China and African states view FOCAC as a major platform for coordination within Belt and Road. Africa was now formally part of Xi's signature foreign policy initiative.

The Five Nos

At the 2018 summit, Xi Jinping articulated what he called the "Five Nos" guiding China's Africa policy:

1. Non-interference in other countries' pursuit of development paths suitable to their national conditions
2. Non-interference in domestic affairs
3. Not imposing China's will on others
4. Not attaching political conditions to foreign aid
5. Not seeking political self-interest in investment and financing

These principles read as a direct rebuke to Western approaches. They also raise obvious questions. If China isn't seeking political self-interest, why does it require One China recognition as a condition for engagement? If it doesn't interfere in domestic affairs, what about reports of Chinese companies bringing in their own workers rather than hiring locally, or allegations that Chinese loans have left some African countries in debt distress?

Critics argue the Five Nos are more rhetoric than reality. Supporters counter that whatever China's motivations, its approach gives African governments more autonomy than Western alternatives.

Debt Forgiveness and the Debt Debate

One of the most controversial aspects of Chinese engagement in Africa concerns debt. Some analysts have accused China of "debt trap diplomacy"—deliberately loading poor countries with unsustainable loans to gain leverage over them. The poster child for this argument is typically Sri Lanka, where the government handed over a strategic port to Chinese control after struggling to repay loans.

The evidence for this theory in Africa is contested. Studies by researchers at Johns Hopkins University's China Africa Research Initiative have found that while some African countries do have concerning levels of Chinese debt, the "debt trap" narrative is often overstated, and other creditors—including Western banks and bondholders—frequently hold more African debt than China does.

China has also periodically forgiven African debts through FOCAC. At a 2022 coordinators' meeting, Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced that China would forgive 23 interest-free loans that had matured at the end of 2021 for 17 African countries. This wasn't entirely altruistic—interest-free loans are different from commercial loans, and the amounts involved were relatively small—but it does complicate the simple "debt trap" narrative.

What's clear is that since the 2012 FOCAC, China has placed more emphasis on the quality, effectiveness, and sustainability of its aid, at least rhetorically. Whether this reflects genuine concern about debt burdens or simply a recognition that countries that can't repay make poor future customers is open to interpretation.

The COVID Pivot

The 2021 FOCAC meeting was unlike any before it. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, participants gathered via videolink, with delegations in Dakar, Senegal, and Beijing. The pandemic had already transformed China-Africa relations in other ways. China had become a major supplier of personal protective equipment, test kits, and eventually vaccines to African countries.

The 2021 summit emphasized "health diplomacy," positioning China as a partner in pandemic response. It also continued themes from previous summits—political cooperation, security, and notably cybersecurity, reflecting growing concerns about digital governance.

A Parallel System

FOCAC isn't China's only regional forum. Around the same time, China established the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, known as CASCF. Some countries are members of both: Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan, and Tunisia all participate in FOCAC as African nations and CASCF as Arab states.

Together, these forums represent something significant: a parallel system of international engagement, led by China, that operates according to different rules than Western-dominated institutions. They're not replacing the United Nations or the World Bank, but they're offering an alternative for countries that find Western conditions onerous.

Whether this competition benefits African nations—by giving them more options and better terms—or harms them—by enabling corruption and irresponsible borrowing—depends on whom you ask and which countries you examine. The record is genuinely mixed.

What FOCAC Reveals

Perhaps the most important thing about FOCAC is what it reveals about the changing world order. Twenty-five years ago, when the forum was founded, China was still primarily focused on its own economic development. Today, it operates the world's most comprehensive engagement platform with an entire continent.

The fact that more African leaders attended the 2018 FOCAC summit than the UN General Assembly tells you something about where these countries see their interests lying. It doesn't mean they've abandoned relationships with Western powers or international institutions. But it does mean they have alternatives now, and they're using them.

FOCAC meetings continue to produce three-year action plans full of impressive-sounding commitments. The real question isn't whether China will keep making promises—it's what kind of Africa these promises are building, and who gets to decide.