China and the European Union in Africa: win–win-lose or win–win-win?

Abstract

The twenty-first century has brought in its wake a flurry of competing foreign investment players on the African investment sphere. This situation may be called the globalization of foreign investment (Bodomo 2017). Foreign investment features as a salient issue for intellectual discussions of topics such as agency, soft power, and symmetry. In this paper, we outline the important role that China and the European Union (EU), the biggest investment polities in Africa, have played in the globalization of investment in Africa and argue that China has, indeed, created a paradigm shift with respect to its investment engagement with the African continent. This paradigm shift may be calibrated in terms of the volume of engagement; in terms of the speed and efficiency with which investment projects are completed, and, in terms of the very discourse of trade and investment. The argument is advanced further by discussing some of the main features of Chinese investment that distinguish it from that of other global players on the African continent, such as Europe. We further extend arguments from our previous work (Bodomo 2017; Bodomo and Che 2020) to say that if Africa does not sharpen its agency, the end result may be that China and the EU may gain at the expense of Africa but that should Africa play a more proactive and controlling role such as enforcing its investment laws, the mid-twenty-first century may yet see a trilateral win–win-win outcome for Africa, China, and the EU.