Infrastructures
In its policy of economic cooperation with developing countries, China plans to secure resources while helping to build infrastructure.
For example, the “Angola model”, which consists of exchanging resources sometimes at low prices for infrastructure construction projects, is an investment policy of China specific to resource-rich countries and sometimes even where the political system is controversial.
The expansion of Chinese investments abroad allows China not only to acquire new technologies, new markets, but also its companies to practice and test their expertise.
It also allows many construction companies to access a large number of foreign markets, create jobs for Chinese workers and gain an international reputation in the construction industry.
In several African countries – Angola, Zambia, Nigeria, DRC, Djibouti and Tanzania – China is investing in the construction or rehabilitation of roads or railways. The increased need to produce electricity and facilitate access to water has prompted African countries such as Ghana, Sudan and Botswana to focus their priority on the construction of hydroelectric dams which is of interest to Chinese companies.
From the 2000s, Chinese companies have been present in the renovation and construction of railways in Africa as in Angola and Nigeria where the renovation of railway lines (respectively Benguela and Lagos-Kano) was undertaken by the China Civil Engineering Company (CCEC).
In 2009, Chinese companies had invested in 18 construction projects in Botswana. Since 2000, Chinese trade and investment in Africa has exploded. Chinese diplomacy has been the catalyst, combining public aid and loans for infrastructure projects, the latter being entrusted to large state-owned enterprises.
This dynamic is part of the Chinese national strategy to secure its supplies. The 2,000 Chinese companies listed in 2013 in Africa are very diverse: state firms, large private companies and SMEs.
The former are mainly active in construction (urban infrastructure, roads, railways, dams, hydroelectricity), logging, mining and oil extraction.
Investments are concentrated in the countries best endowed with raw materials (Angola, Algeria, DRC) and those with a large domestic market (Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Africa).
They are worn by around 1 million Chinese, including many individual migrants who work in major projects and in services (import export, retail trade, hotels, restaurants, Chinese medicine).
The multiplication of new projects East and southern Africa have recorded a significant number of Chinese investments in infrastructure in recent years. Nearly $ 4 billion thus enabled the Middle Kingdom to link Djibouti to Ethiopia on nearly 756 km of railways.
In Kenya, China Eximbank has funded 90% of the construction of a rail line connecting the port city of Mombasa to Nairobi. Nearly $ 13 billion is spent by China to expand the rail network in the country. In Mozambique and Angola, large infrastructural projects are financed and developed by Beijing.
In 2018, the Mozambican authorities inaugurated a suspension bridge over 680 meters long over Maputo Bay at a total cost of $ 725 million. Funded at 95% by China, the work was to be part of a road section intended to ensure “the connection between the north and the south of Africa by road”, indicates the president of Mozambique Filipe Nyusi.
Between 2000 and 2014, China invested nearly $ 2.28 billion in Mozambican infrastructure. In Angola, the value of infrastructure projects set up by China in 2017 exceeded $ 10 billion, according to Cui Amin, the Chinese ambassador to Luanda. The ports are also the subject of intense investment on the part of the Chinese giant. Beijing has provided 85% of the $ 580 million needed for the construction of the multi-purpose port of Doraleh in Djibouti.
The Asian country also holds 23.5% of the capital of the Djiboutian port authority. With the multiplication of this funding, it is “more than half of the investments planned by China within the framework of this new Silk Road which will go to Africa” indicates Le Monde. With a trade volume of $ 170 billion in 2017, China has become, for the 9th consecutive year, the main trading partner of the African continent.