Outcompeting Strategic Challengers: The Case of China in Africa
Both the original Integrated Review (IR21) and the recently published refresh (IR23) are right to identify China’s rise and increasingly assertive global role as the most significant change to the geopolitical context in the 21st century. However, both of these strategies fail to grapple with implications of China’s growing role on the African continent, and what these will mean for the UK’s partnerships with our key foreign policy partners across Africa.
Kenya is a particularly relevant case study for the growing influence of China and Chinese investment. Consistently identified as one of the UK’s most important strategic and economic partners in Africa, the country has also seen an influx of Chinese funding for major infrastructure projects, especially under the banner of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
While some Chinese investment in Kenya has undoubtedly spurred economic growth and development, lending from China has also exacerbated concerns over both the sustainability of Kenya’s mounting debt burden and environmental concerns. As such, now is an important time for the UK to illustrate that we can be a serious and responsible development partner of choice, for countries looking for alternatives to China.
Report Forward
Alexander Stafford MP
Earlier this year, I joined the Coalition for Global Prosperity and CAFOD, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, to see first-hand the impact the UK is having through its development programmes. Together we visited communities in Marsabit, who are experiencing the worst drought in forty years. The humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa is now one of the worst in the world, made worse by the global consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In Kenya alone, over four million people have been affected by the drought with 4.5 million now at risk of starvation.
I have always believed that as Members of Parliament, we have a special responsibility to ensure that all taxpayers money is being well-spent, in line with our country’s interests and values. That is what I saw in Kenya. Through its development work, the UK is helping people in dire need respond to the effects of a crisis that, if not addressed, could destabilise the region. As Pope Francis has said, ‘‘Poverty, decadence and suffering in one part of the earth are a silent breeding ground for problems that will end up affecting the entire planet.”
It is not just because of the moral case for doing so, that I think the programmes that I saw are so important. It is also in our national interest to ensure that partners like Kenya, Commonwealth members, with whom we share long and meaningful ties by way of language, shared values, legal systems, governance and traditions, know that we are committed to their development and a shared vision of the international, rules-based order. That shared commitment to the international order has been particularly evident in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which the Kenyan government has been steadfast in opposing with us at the UN and in other international fora. We want to help Kenya to achieve its ambitions; to help them develop and become more prosperous, more resilient to shocks and a bulwark of regional stability.
Other countries, particularly China, have a very different view of the international system and in countries like Kenya, the Chinese government and its intermediaries have spent vast sums of money to try and cultivate their influence. Unlike us, they do not share a commitment to transparency, good governance or our belief in the importance of individual rights.
As this report sets out, we are right to ensure that allies of ours like Kenya, whose global importance will increase significantly in the decades to come, have a meaningful alternative in partners like the UK. Through our development work, not just aid, but also through trade, security and shared diplomatic endeavours, we can deliver in our mutual interests, whilst also helping people in real need, like those I met in Marsabit.