Africa eyes economic progress in relationship with Beijing, but are there trade-offs?

This appeared in The Millennial Source

With China’s rise as an economic powerhouse in recent decades, along with its international investment program — known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which seeks out large-scale infrastructure partnerships in external markets — Beijing is emerging as a significant source of global development funding.

While the majority of BRI projects take place in Asia, closer to home, a growing minority of funding projects are occurring in Africa.

As of late last year, 40 of the continent’s 55 countries have signed a memorandum of agreement (MOU) for a Chinese-financed project.

Examples of recent projects include a railway connecting Ethiopia with its neighbor Djibouti and the construction of a 3,050-megawatt hydroelectric plant in Nigeria. As with other BRI projects across the world, these mostly focus on essential infrastructure projects that much of the developing world lacks.

For this reason, a willingness from the Chinese government to help finance and construct these projects are often welcomed by local officials. While the projects give beneficiary countries an opportunity to lay the groundwork for steady economic growth and domestic…