China seeks to strengthen its role in Africa with investments in renewable energy and anti-colonial narrative

In November 2023, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that China's slowdown in growth will have an impact on sub-Saharan Africa. Almost a month has passed since the announcement that in 2022 China's lending to the continent had hit a historic low of $1 billion, far from the figure of almost 29,000 million in 2016. Beijing's golden era in Africa appears to be giving way to a more pragmatic one, with fewer and more cautious investments, after debt problems left many countries struggling to repay the money and others such as Zambia and Ghana defaulting.

China has been blamed in the West for putting the continent in debt. Xi Jinping’s government is the largest lender to African countries (17% of the continent’s total external debt), but most of its debt is still internal, with 77% of Africa’s external debt owed to private creditors and financial institutions such as the World Bank or IMF.