As China announced that it was waiving 23 interest-free loans to 17 African countries and offering $10 billion of its reserves to the International Monetary Funds, should the continent celebrate this apparent show of magnanimity by Beijing?
Last week’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation provided the occasion for the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to confirm the cancelations but there was nothing in the way of clear details about the loans’ worth and which African nations were the beneficiaries.
These interest-free loans (23 in number) he said had matured at the end of last year 2021.
At least $10 billion in African debt to China has been written off since the turn of the century, according to Chinese figures.
A report by the China Africa Research Initiative claims that between 2000 and 2019 Beijing has written off zero-interest loans valued at $3.4 billion.
This latest overture some of whose details are still shrouded in secrecy in tandem with communist complexes, if one listens to critics, has not dissuaded skeptics from waxing lyrical about China’s real intentions in Africa.
They argue with some justification that the cancelled loans constitute a tiny fraction of Africa’s financial indebtedness to the world’s second largest economy after the United States.
Thus the announcement may be misleading, given that the near-blanket debt forgiveness does not necessarily leave any ”seriously positive dent” on the huge commercial concessions that still keep the continent mired in indebtedness to China.
As of 2021, Africa’s debt to China is estimated to be 21 percent of all the continent’s overall debt.
Research has shown that China’s debt cancellations to Africa has been nothing new with those of the last few years showing this regular pattern of behaviour by the Asian-cum world economic giant which is one of the continent’s biggest trading partners by some distance.
The other is the United States.
Since the 1990s when Chinese economic interests in Africa was picking up steam, countries on the continent had found themselves incurring increasing debts from China, a situation which continues to this day and leaves critics suspecting that Beijing has neocolonialist intentions on the continent.
They speak of the ultimate debt traps which in the long haul would render African governments paralysed by their sheer indebtedness to China whose conditions for such loans would end up enslaving Africans and driving them deeper into Chinese neocolonial designs which are beginning to be apparent before they are supposed to come into effect.
Perhaps the position of Kenya’s frontrunners in the August 9th elections offer gleanings about the lingering distrust some African politicians have of China despite its welcomed policy of offering aid without being condescending about the politics of the beneficiary nations for which Western countries are criticised.
A overwhelming number of African leaders are comfortable dealing with Beijing which does not pursue a policy of putting their mouth where their money is politically speaking. They routinely resent this attitude by the West who are readily reminded of their colonial misadventures which had cost Africa and Africans dearly.
But something about Chinese loans and other aid to Africa remains deeply suspect in the point of view of Africans given to cynicism about anything coming from outsiders to a continent whose mineral resources others have made no secret of coveting.
Like all loans forgiven in the past, this latest ones have no weight in significantly shaking the uneven balance of economic power between Africa and a superpower like China which is hot on the heels of the United States for the honour of being the world’s number 1 economy.
WN/as/APA