By: Brian Obara, Isis Sartori Reis, Tom Baxter
This is a summary of the third of four workshops discussing the Africa-China relationship, economic development, innovation and corruption.
From 7-9 April 2025, experts came together in Nairobi to discuss China’s role in Africa’s green energy transition and wider economic development.
The workshop examined China’s complex engagement with the continent, the critical minerals sector and African “green” innovation. It was organised by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in partnership with Dialogue Earth and the University of Nairobi.
Bigger questions ran through and emerged from the discussion. What forms should economic development take in Africa? How to position African economies further up global value chains? What can be learned from China’s successes and mistakes? How to rectify corruption and state capture with many African governments?
This was the third in a series of four workshops aimed at building knowledge and dialogue on China’s involvement in climate and environmental issues. The other two have taken place in Latin America and Southeast Asia, and the final one will be in Europe.
The Africa-China relationship, then and now
China is not a new player on the African continent. Almost all African countries have become recipients of Chinese aid since the mid 1950s, when China began offering overseas cooperation while it was a low-income country. Outlining this history, one participant emphasised that in China’s foreign-policy thinking, such cooperation is strategic and underpins an assumption that help will be reciprocated. This would usually be in the shape of trade, access to resources or political support for China’s interests, for example at the UN.
Early cooperation came in the form of government-to-government aid. By the 1980s, this had become a model of investment, finance and aid, which itself was based on Japanese and Indian strategies of overseas cooperation. In the 21st century, Chinese investments have become very much a part of the continent’s economic and political landscape.
The discussions highlighted how the China-Africa relationship goes beyond the purely economic. Scholarships to study in China are offered to African students and all-expenses-paid study tours and trainings in China offered to African journalists and government officials. Free Chinese classes are also becoming increasingly common at African universities. The electric vehicles moving around African cities are Chinese, and the largest mobile phone brand in Africa is Tecno Mobile, based in Shenzhen. Meanwhile, roads and other large infrastructure projects, often referred to as gifts and tokens of friendship, cement the technocentric and industrial idea of development that China promotes. These ties with African countries, it was pointed out, are key for China to maintain its international political status as a node of global power with its own network of allies. In this sense, China needs African countries politically just as much as they need China economically.
Despite the long historical ties and the rise in soft power, perceptions vary on the impacts of Chinese investments and influence in the continent. It was pointed out that government views tend to be positive, primarily rooted in opportunities for economic development. While the community perceptions tend to be more negative, with participants emphasising that benefits from projects often fail to trickle down to local communities, and tensions result. Many communities, it was argued, grieve the lack of consultation and information, the displacement that often happens without proper compensation – despite existing legislation and guidelines guaranteeing it – as well as the environmental implications, such as water and soil pollution, that jeopardise their livelihoods. It was pointed out that Chinese companies may not understand how to properly engage local communities, as they are not familiar with it from their operations in China. One participant highlighted that the negative perception among communities is not necessarily just a reaction to China, but a symptom of discontent with local politics.
Economic development
A major focus area of the discussions was economic development, often in quite a traditional sense. Participants highlighted the need for African countries to industrialise and “move up” global value chains, in order to create wealth, jobs and more resilient economies. Participants lamented the history of African economies’ reliance on the export of raw materials. This economic phenomenon continues in many sectors today, including those closely related to global green transitions such as critical minerals.
Other participants raised the question of whether African governments and people are ready for the negative impacts and immense upheaval that has historically come with industrial-led “pollute first, clean up later” development. Taking China as an example, one speaker pointed to the costs of environmental pollution and degradation. Addressing this has cost huge amounts of money, expertise and effort – and indeed has left many things lost forever. The social dislocation and disruption left by industrialisation was also mentioned. Traditionally, this is a process of moving land-tilling farmers into factories and other wage labour sectors, often with few rights, low pay and poor contracts. “Are African governments and citizens prepared for this?” the participant asked.
Development is a complex process. One participant said many African nations think too narrowly about attracting foreign investment and short-term economic growth. A better approach, they suggested, is to enable long-term growth by raising knowledge and skills, as China and other East Asian economies have done so effectively. This led to discussion about knowledge and technology transfers in the China-Africa relationship. Such transfers are committed to in, for example, the 9th Forum on China Africa Cooperation’s Beijing Action Plan, the supposed blueprint for China-Africa relations through to 2027. To date, however, many projects initiated by Chinese investors rely on the expertise of Chinese engineers and planners, a source of tension in the relationship.
In response to these issues, the discussion asked whether there might be other, cleaner ways to stimulate African industrialisation, manufacturing, economic development and knowledge upgrade and transfer. Innovation in emerging green technologies, such as electric vehicles and electronic equipment, was given as an example. In Kenya, both can benefit from the country’s extremely clean power generation.
Witnessing African manufacturing
A field trip to two Nairobi-based manufacturers offered some insight into how innovation, light manufacturing and leveraging relations with Chinese partners might offer pathways to economic development.
At Gearbox Europlacer, a Nairobi-based electronics manufacturer, Kenyan engineers design and assemble a wide range of equipment, such as solar-powered water-tank monitors for export to the Gambia and medical equipment to the UK. Many of the original components are imported from China, with platforms such as Alibaba providing the connection to Chinese suppliers. The facility benefits from Kenya’s tax incentives for local production while investing in skills training.
The workshop participants also visited BasiGo, a pioneering electric bus company headquartered in Nairobi with a growing footprint in Rwanda. The startup partners with China’s BYD to import electric bus components and assemble them in Kenya. There is regular knowledge exchange between BasiGo and BYD staff members, including visits by BasiGo staff to factories in China and a degree of knowledge transfer. With a 30% local content requirement set by Kenya’s government, the assembly of buses also helps to stimulate some local industries such as glass and interior materials.
BasiGo is helping to shift Nairobi’s public-transport system away from diesel engines. With nearly 90% of Kenya’s electricity generated by renewable sources, the new buses’ carbon footprint is extremely low.
The startup plans to deploy 1,000 EVs across East Africa by 2027. Beyond that, the company hopes to expand manufacturing. “The goal isn’t just to sell buses but to build an entire ecosystem with charging stations, trained mechanics, renewable-energy grids,” said a senior company manager, who walked participants through one of BasiGo’s Nairobi facilities.
However, challenges like high import taxes on parts and unreliable electricity linger. This underlines a central paradox for African countries: while there is a desire to manufacture domestically, it is often cheaper to import directly, normally from China. How to balance the cost and economic-development incentives – and the short- and long-term horizons – is one of the most pressing policy challenges for African governments today.
Corruption
Through all of this, the conversation regularly circled back to the issue of corruption and state capture. Not as an abstract force, but as a major contributing factor to many African countries’ poor infrastructure, lack of value addition to raw materials, and why foreign investors from China and elsewhere shrug off environmental laws.
“Corruption isn’t just a problem,” one governance expert in attendance said. “It’s the single greatest threat to turning Africa’s resources into public good.” Staggeringly, over USD 1 trillion has left Africa via illegal financial flows in the past two decades, they said, citing a figure calculated by the Thabo Mbeki-led High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa.
This corruption directly contributes to poor decision-making around big-ticket infrastructure, mining and industrial projects. That leads to negative outcomes for local communities and replicates the extractivism that has shaped the relations of most African economies to the world, the expert continued.
Solutions proposed include stronger whistleblower protections, regional anti-corruption alliances, and contracts that tie investments to transparent local job quotas and value-added processing. As one participant bluntly put it: “If our leaders won’t act in our interest, we’ll keep being victims of every foreign investor’s agenda.”
Additionally, participants saw a clear need to build up knowledge and understanding of how Chinese stakeholders in overseas investments operate, what their economic and political incentives are, and how to effectively engage with them.
The workshop concluded with a public panel at the University of Nairobi, attended mostly by students. Audience questions focused on negotiating fair and mutually beneficial deals with Chinese stakeholders, job creation, and avoiding the so-called “resource curse.” Attendees were also curious about the lessons that might be drawn from China’s development story and what opportunities exist for better engagement with China.
As emphasised during the workshop, there is a key role for African governments and other stakeholders to shape and drive Africa’s engagement with China.
“Negotiating with China – or any foreign investor – requires specialised skills … and political will,” said one participant.