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The world has become increasingly multipolar and multiplex, as multiple sources and centres of power emerge and redefine international relations. While the Washington-led international order has declined significantly in the last two decades, the United States remains an enduring powerhouse for emerging and other contending powers. Following its rapid economic transformation, military modernisation, and international power projection, China has become the most consequential geopolitical rival of the United States (US) in the 21st century. The US-China geopolitical competition has played out across multiple domains and continents worldwide. Amid these, Africa has emerged as a notable geopolitical battleground, as the US, China, and other great powers compete for influence on the continent.
Over the last two decades, China has aggressively expanded its footprint in Africa through diplomatic engagements, cultural exchange, investment, loans, aid, technological transfer, trade, infrastructural development, political alignment, and security cooperation. This development has co-existed, rivalled, challenged, downsized, and sometimes displaced the US-led Western influence in many African countries. In response, the US’s African policy has become increasingly shaped by geopolitical competition with China and other rival powers.
Beyond foreign interests and associated geopolitical rhetoric, there is a growing interest in African agency in the emerging world order, disorder, and reorder. Hence, the position of Africa in the emerging US-China geopolitical competition, its drivers and consequences deserve policy and scholarly interrogation.
Against this background, this panel is interested in the following: (1) the interests, strategies, and engagements of the US and China in Africa; (2) the contexts, dimensions, drivers, emerging trajectories, and consequences of the US-China geopolitical competition in Africa, and (3) the best ways for Africa to harness the opportunities, manage the challenges, and maximise the benefits of the US-China geopolitical rivalry on the continent.