‘China has a grand, strategic plan. We don’t’: how Djibouti became a microcosm of Beijing’s growing foothold in Africa
- China has financed ports, railways, airports and naval bases, as well as servers that house most or all of the internet for Somalia, Yemen and Ethiopia
- But critics fear African countries could be left in ‘debt-traps’, and risk those assets being taken back by China. Beijing now holds over 70 per cent of Djibouti’s GDP in debt
Above ground in the tiny but strategically located country of Djibouti, signs of China’s presence are everywhere.
Beijing’s extensive investments in Djibouti are a microcosm of how China has rapidly gained a strategic foothold across the continent. Western countries, including Africa’s former colonisers, for decades have used hefty aid packages to leverage trade and security deals, but Chinese-financed projects have brought huge infrastructural development in less than a generation.
Djibouti is one node in an economic chain that stretches across the northern rim of the Indian Ocean ... They have a grand, strategic plan. We don’t.
Overall, Chinese companies invested twice as much money between 2014 and 2018 in African countries as American companies, spending US$72.2 billion, according to Ernst & Young.
“The Chinese are thinking far into the long-term in Djibouti and Africa in general,” said David Shinn, a former US ambassador to Ethiopia who was also the State Department’s desk officer for Djibouti as far back as the late 1960s.