Tag Archives: first Chinese military base Africa

How Countries Dissolve: the Conquest of Africa

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As Wagner fighters, a Russian mercenary group, play a central role in Russia’s war in Ukraine, the group is quietly expanding its alliances in Africa, penetrating new mineral-rich areas, exploiting the exit of Western powers and creating alliances with local fighters. Wagner fighters and instructors are working with the government of the Central African Republic in a bid to seize areas rich with precious minerals that could be exported through Sudan, say Western security officials. Wagner is also looking to expand its influence in Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, while consolidating its relationship with the military junta in Mali…

With an estimated 5,000 men stationed across Africa, Wagner’s footprint is now almost as large as the U.S.’s 6,000 troops and support personnel on the continent. ..The push aims to create a corridor from Wagner-controlled mines in the Central African Republic through Sudan, where the group works closely with a local strongman, and onto the mineral trading hub of Dubai.

In January 2023,  Mr. Prigozhin, head of Wagner, stressed that sending fighters to Africa was “absolutely necessary.” “There are presidents to whom I gave my word that I would defend them,” he said on his Telegram channel. “If I now withdraw one hundred, two hundred or five hundred fighters from there, then this country will simply cease to exist.”  

Excerpts from Benoit Faucon & Joe Parkinson, Wagner Group Aims to Bolster Putin’s Influence in Africa, WSJ, Feb. 14, 2023

Unparalleled Generosity: How China Won the Hearts and Minds of Africa

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When  it comes to building big things in Africa, China is unrivalled. Beijing-backed firms have redrawn the continent’s transport map. Thanks to China’s engineers and bankers you can hop on a train in Lagos to beat the traffic to Ibadan, drive across parts of eastern Congo in hours rather than days or fly into any one of dozens of recently spruced-up airports from Zanzibar to Zambia. Throw in everything else from skyscrapers and bridges to dams and three dozen-odd ports and it all adds up to rather a lot of mortar.

It was not always so. In 1990 American and European companies scooped up more than 85% of construction contracts on the continent. Chinese firms did not even get a mention. Now Western firms are struggling to win business in a fast-growing market. (The World Bank predicts that demand for infrastructure spending alone will be more than $300bn a year by 2040.) Africa’s population is growing faster than that of any other continent, and Africans are moving to cities faster than people elsewhere. Both these trends will drive demand. The dragon’s share will be built by Chinese firms, which in 2020 were responsible for 31% of all infrastructure projects in Africa with a value of $50m or more, according to Deloitte, a consultancy. That was up from 12% in 2013. Western firms were directly responsible for just 12% or so (compared with 37% in 2013)…

Chinese lenders are pluckier than their Western rivals. Sometimes this borders on recklessness. When Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya’s president, wanted $4.7bn to build a new railway which the World Bank warned would never turn a profit, Chinese lenders backed it. The railway has since lost more than $200m. Often, Chinese firms are tough negotiators. Several have struck resources-for-roads deals, such as those worth more than $1.1bn in Ghana and Guinea, where the loans are backed by bauxite… 

In 2021,  China said it would stump up its own cash to build smart new foreign ministries in Congo and Kenya. It has also picked up the tab for numerous other official buildings, from parliament complexes in Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe to presidential palaces in Burundi, Guinea-Bissau and Togo. Given such generosity, it is hardly surprising that some African governments are predisposed to favor Chinese firms…. 

Perhaps as important is that China is unwittingly crowding in Western money by stoking the geopolitical anxieties of Western leaders. Britain’s government recently said its development arm would invest $1bn in Kenyan infrastructure and that a British firm would build a new rail hub in central Nairobi. The G7 group of countries last year launched the Build Back Better World initiative, a shameless copy of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). All this should mean more opportunities for construction firms of all nationalities, whether Western, Chinese or, with a bit of luck, African, too.

Excerpts from Chasing the dragon: How Chinese firms have dominated African infrastructure, Economist,  Feb. 19, 2022

The Neck and Neck Race in Africa

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Classified American intelligence reports suggest China intends to establish its first permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean in the tiny Central African country of Equatorial Guinea. The officials…said the reports raise the prospect that Chinese warships would be able to rearm and refit opposite the East Coast of the U.S.—a threat that is setting off alarm bells at the White House and Pentagon. Principal deputy U.S. national security adviser Jon Finer visited Equatorial Guinea in October 2021 on a mission to persuade President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and his son and heir apparent, Vice President Teodoro “Teodorin” Nguema Obiang Mangue, to reject China’s overtures…

In Equatorial Guinea, the Chinese likely have an eye on Bata, according to a U.S. official. Bata already has a Chinese-built deep-water commercial port on the Gulf of Guinea, and excellent highways link the city to Gabon and the interior of Central Africa….

Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony with a population of 1.4 million, secured independence in 1968. The capital, Malabo, is on the island of Bioko, while Bata is the largest city on the mainland section of the country, which is wedged between Gabon and Cameroon. Mr. Obiang has ruled the country since 1979. The discovery of huge offshore gas and oil reserves in 1996 allegedly allowed members of his family to spend lavishly on exotic cars, mansions and other luxuries…The State Department has accused the Obiang regime of extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture and other abuses. A U.S. Senate committee issued a report in 2004 criticizing Washington-based Riggs Bank for turning “a blind eye to evidence suggesting the bank was handling the proceeds of foreign corruption” in accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in deposits controlled by Mr. Obiang, his wife and other relatives……

Equatorial Guinea relies on American oil companies to extract offshore resources that have made the country the richest on the sub-Saharan mainland, as measured by per capita annual gross domestic product….Chinese state-owned companies have built 100 commercial ports around Africa in the past two decades, according to Chinese government data….

The State Department recently raised Equatorial Guinea’s ranking in the annual assessment of how diligently countries combat human trafficking. The upgrade could allow the Biden administration to offer maritime-security assistance to help win Equatorial Guinea’s cooperation.

Excerpts from MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS, China Seeks First Military Base on Africa’s Atlantic Coast, U.S. Intelligence Finds, WSJ, Dec. 5, 2021

The Techno-spheres: Westerners against the Chinese

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Lithuania’s government on Feb. 17 prohibited Chinese security-scanner maker Nuctech Co. from supplying equipment to the country’s two airports, saying a proposed deal was “not in line with national-security interests.” State-controlled Nuctech, which the U.S. government in December 2020 listed among Chinese entities banned from certain transactions with U.S. parties, had won a tender launched a year ago by state-owned Lithuanian Airports.

Canada last year also abandoned a plan to buy Nuctech scanners for its embassies following controversy around the announced deal. Norway, Croatia and an EU directorate in recent months have also stopped scanner tenders involving Nuctech, although none publicly linked the cancellations to security, as Lithuania did. Lithuania banned China’s Nuctech from supplying security-scanning equipment to its two airports.

“We are choosing the Western technosphere. We are not choosing the Chinese technosphere,” said Laurynas Kasciunas, chairman of the Lithuanian parliament’s national-security and defense committee, which oversees a national-security review board that had recommended banning Nuctech. Such policy reversals remain a minority amid extensive Chinese business activity across the EU. 

Excerpt from Daniel Michaels and Valentina Pop, China Faces European Obstacles as Some Countries Heed U.S. Pressure, WSJ, Feb. 23, 2021

Chinese Military Base in Africa: Djibouti

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China is negotiating a military base in the strategic port of Djibouti, an historic development that would see the US and China each have bases in the small nation that guards the entrance to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. President Ismail Omar Guelleh says that discussions are “ongoing” and that Beijing is “welcome”.  Djibouti is already home to Camp Lemonnier, the military headquarters used by US Special Forces for covert, anti-terror and other operations in Yemen and in Africa. France, the former colonial master, and Japan also have bases in the port, which is used by many foreign navies to fight piracy in neighbouring Somalia…

China signed a security and defence agreement with Djibouti in February 2014. But a Chinese military base in Djibouti, the first in Africa, “would definitely be historic”, according to David Shinn, a former US ambassador to Ethiopia.  The US was reportedly angry about the conclusion last year of the China-Djibouti defence deal last year. But Shinn predicts that the US will take it in its stride…

China is reportedly considering a permanent military base in Obock, Djibouti’s northern port city.  “China clearly has a goal of building a blue-water navy, which means it will at some point go well beyond the east coast of Africa and the western Indian Ocean, and it has to think — long term — about how it would be able to service its naval vessels as they go further and further, ” he explained.

Camp Lemonnier, home to 4,000 American citizens, is in the south-east of Djibouti. The US in May 2015 signed a 20-year lease, indicating its willingness to stay. Terms of the lease were not disclosed.

A new Chinese deep-sea port in Djibouti…could provide a boost to China’s sphere of influence, which already extends from the South China Sea, along the west coast of Myanmar to the Arabian-Sea coastal port of Gwadar, Pakistan — a major destination in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.  “Establishing these deep-sea ports is really about securing its economic interests, projecting influence and securing oil exports from the Gulf region,”…..

Trade between Africa and China, in excess of 200 billion dollars (180 billion euros), is above the continent’s trade with the European Union or the US.  In Djibouti, China is already financing major infrastructure projects estimated to total more than 9 billion dollars (8 billion euros), including improved ports, airports and railway lines….There was speculation that Russia also wanted to establish a presence in Djibouti, but the presence of Russian warships may have created even more controversy in western nations because of the crisis in the Ukraine.

Excerpts  Michel Arseneault, ‘Historic’ Chinese military base to open in Horn of Africa, Agence France Presse, May 11, 2015