How China sees the 2024 Focac summit, and why Africa matters

Over the last 24 years, China’s diplomatic footprint in Africa has risen meteorically, nearly eclipsing the influence of Africa’s traditional partners in the West. China’s magic is the Forum China-Africa Cooperation (Focac).

Established in 2000 as the premier platform for policy dialogue and cooperation between China and Africa, Focac is manifestly the sharpest arrow in the quiver of China’s African policy. The American-led West has upped the ante to roll back Beijing’s sway on the continent, setting off the fiercest geopolitical competition since the end of the Cold War.

As China gears to host the 2024 Focac summit in its capital on September 4-6, 2024, its influence in Africa will be tested in a visibly public way. The summit, the fourth of its kind, means everything to China’s African policy.

But China’s pundits view Focac as still work in progress, looking forward to the day in the future when all the 55 heads of the African Union member states will attend Focac summits in Beijing. 

Focac 2024 is not business as usual. The summit’s theme — “Joining Hands to Advance Modernization and Build a High-Level China-Africa Community with a Shared Future” — reveals the deep intellectual dive China is taking in diplomacy to challenge the West’s global hegemony. 

This becomes clear from Focac as both a policy and intellectual project. Primarily, the forum rests on a blend of two philosophical traditions. From the Chinese traditions comes the Confucian ideal of ‘harmony’ between people, cultures and civilizations.

The 2024 Focac fete is guided by the values of “equal consultation, enhancing understanding, expanding consensus, strengthening friendship and promoting cooperation,” says the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Intellectual approach to diplomacy

And from the African side comes the Ubuntu philosophy of consensus where people in society talk, share values and work together towards common goals.

Based on this view of two traditions, China is dealing with Africa as one indivisible civilization. Similarly, in line with the Confucian ethic, Beijing sees the 4th Focac Summit as a “friendly gathering of the big China-Africa family”. 

This intellectual approach to diplomacy is also clear from the events in the run up to the Heads of State summit. I was a speaker at the 6th Forum on China-Africa Media and Think-Tank High-Level Dialogue” attended by Chinese and African Ministers incharge of information or Communications as well as heads of key think tanks specializing on China-Africa affairs held in Beijing on August 20-22, 2024. 

This meeting delved deep into concepts defining Sino-Africa relations in the 21st century. One of these is the concept and practice of ‘co-prosperity’ or ‘shared prosperity’ . This concept of co-prosperity has familiar echoes in the United Nation’s transformative promise of “leaving no one behind” — itself the cornerstone of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 

In a nutshell, the road to the 2024 Focac summit is defined by five narratives poised to frame Sino-Africa diplomacy into the future. 
The first narrative is the use of the concept of co-prosperity as a counter-narrative to the ‘clash of civilizations' thesis by right-wing Western intellectuals which depicts human civilizations as armour-plated and poised for war.

Second, the vision of the 2024 Focac summit 2024 of “building a China-Africa community with a shared future” stems from the alternative narrative that Africa and China met centuries before European colonialism along the enchanted “Silk Roads.” Here, they exchanged goods, services and ideas about values, religions, cultures, economies and forms of government. Chinese and African historians and researchers have unveiled evidence pointing to Kenyan coast as a scene of those ancient exchanges. 

The third narrative relates to the conquest, occupation and humiliation of China and Africa by external forces. 

Fourthly, China and Africa rediscovered each other and joined hands after 1949. Modern China helped Africa to cast off the yoke of colonialism. And in the 1970s, Africa supported China to regain its seat in the United Nations. 

Multi-trillion connectivity project

Fifth, Focac is a beautiful story of the two civilizations living harmoniously side by side as equal and mutually respecting partners, working hand in glove to remake the World into what President Xi Jinping describes as “a community of shared future for mankind”. 

Six, both China and Africa have a duty to explore and pursue their own independent paths to modernization relevant to their culture and historical experiences. Modernization should not be confused with westernization.

For example, After China adopted its reform and opening up policy in 1978, it has lifted up over 850 million of its people from poverty, becoming the world’s second largest economy with a world class military. However, the triumph of Chinese-style modernization has greatly inspired Africa, reassuring it that poverty is not a curse for any country or civilization.

Focac is Africa’s gateway to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s multi-trillion connectivity project. Over the last 24 years, through Focac and BRI, China has channeled over $200 billion to support the continent’s development. China is supporting the African Union Agenda 2063, Africa’s development blue print. The result is that Africa is no longer a hopeless continent, but a new frontier of robust growth.

Kenya is one of the 52 out of 54 African countries participating in the initiative. The 2024 Focac summit provides ideal opportunity for China and Kenya to move their relationship to whole new levels. Chins is Kenya’s leading trading partner. China can step up investments in industrialisation, capacity development and technical training to help youth access jobs in local and international job markets. 

Additionally, Nairobi is participating in the “Outlook on Peaceful Development in the Horn of Africa” put forward by China in January 2022 to promote lasting peace, stability, and prosperity. 

Professor Peter Kagwanja is the Chief Executive at the Africa Policy Institute, Adjunct Professor University of Nairobi and Visiting Scholar at the National Defence University.

This article is an excerpt from the paper on: "Co-prosperity of Civilizations: Exchanges and mutual learning between China and Africa” during the 6th Forum on China-Africa Media Cooperation & Think Tank High Level Dialogue held in Beijing, China, on August 20-22, 2024.