China’s discreet and silent offensive in Africa is worrying Beijing’s rivals, where the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), a major triennial meeting with countries on the African continent, is being held from September 4 to 6. “China is actively seeking to establish a naval base on the Atlantic coast of Africa”worries an official from the American Defense Department contacted by The WorldIn March 2022, General Stephen J. Townsend, then head of the US Africa Command, had already expressed alarm about this, placing the blocking of this project as “first priority” of the United States in the Gulf of Guinea.
The base would allow Beijing to station warships on the Atlantic shores facing the American coast. “It is in Equatorial Guinea that they have the most powerful leverage”the officer had stressed. Inaugurated in 2019, financed and built by the Chinese state, the deep-water port of Bata could play this role.
For China, establishing such a naval foothold is of geopolitical and economic importance: it would allow it to ensure security, and therefore the sustainability of growing commercial interests in the region. On a continental scale, this dual motivation explains why Africa’s leading economic partner is investing in a sector where it had little presence ten years ago: security.
This commitment was motivated by the “New Silk Roads” initiative launched by President Xi Jinping when he came to power in 2013. China has thus begun to weave a network of trade routes across the world to connect its territory to Europe. The shores of the Horn of Africa form one of the traffic corridors for Chinese container ships and, to ensure the safety of its ships, which are prone to piracy, China established its first African military base in Djibouti in 2017.
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If its military claims on the continent are revealed at this time, Beijing is above all seeking to present itself as a peacemaker in Africa. Since the early 2000s, China has strengthened its presence there within UN peacekeeping operations. In March 2024, 75% of Chinese peacekeepers deployed across the world were in Africa, or around 1,400 people, spread across the five UN missions currently operating on the continent. Beijing thus hopes to benefit from the reservoir of votes of African countries at the UN.
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