Africa’s debt collector: China’s shifting role offers US a golden opportunity

Excerpt

For two decades, China’s strategy in Africa was straightforward: shower the continent with opaque and corrupt loans to build roads, ports, and power plants, securing influence and natural resources for itself. But that lending boom is winding down and the bills are coming due.

As China shifts from serving as Africa’s ATM to its debt collector, the U.S. has a generational opening to become the partner of choice for a disillusioned continent — if Washington moves with speed, purpose, and transparency. 

The lending retrenchment is real. Chinese sovereign lending to Africa has fallen sharply from its 2018 peak — down roughly 71 percent by 2023 — even as Chinese trade and investment attention tilts toward mining and critical minerals. That means fewer new loans but more pressure to collect on the old ones. The new reality is hard-nosed recovery on opaque and unpopular contracts.

Daniel Swift is a senior research analyst for economics, finance, and trade for the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is a retired U.S. diplomat and was mostly recently the Acting Coordinator for Prosper Africa — a presidential-level national security initiative to increase two-way trade and investment between the U.S. and Africa.