The evolving dynamics of the United States and China have increasingly focused on Africa, turning the continent into a central arena for strategic competition. China has invested heavily in infrastructure, resource extraction, and diplomatic partnerships, while the United States has sought to maintain influence through trade initiatives, and selective engagement. Africa’s vast reserves of critical minerals, essential for technologies such as  renewable energy, electric vehicles, and advanced electronics, have made the continent particularly important.

The engagement takes on special significance in the context of the 2025 G20 Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, the first G20 meeting held on African soil. The summit emphasizes development, sustainability, and the role of Global South nations in shaping global governance. China has positioned itself as a strong supporter of African development priorities, while the absence of the United States underscores the divisions within the international system. In this environment, African nations are not merely arenas of competition—they are actively leveraging major-country relations to advance their own economic and strategic objectives.

Africa’s abundance of critical resources, particularly minerals essential for renewable energy, electric vehicles, and digital technologies, has made the continent a focal point for global powers seeking long-term influence. China has leveraged large-scale infrastructure investment, trade agreements, and diplomatic engagement to establish a pervasive presence across the continent, often presenting itself as a partner aligned with African development priorities. Meanwhile, the United States has pursued a more selective strategy, emphasizing governance, security partnerships, and targeted aid programs. This contrast highlights the fundamental difference in approaches: China offers comprehensive, tangible incentives, while the United States relies on conditional, value-driven engagement, creating openings for Africa to navigate between the major countries.

The 2025 G20 Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, underscores the evolving dynamics. Hosting the summit on African soil for the first time provided an unprecedented platform for African nations to project influence within a major global governance forum, China’s active support for the summit, both diplomatically and economically, signals Beijing’s broader strategy of consolidating cooperation in the Global South, aligning African development priorities with its Belt and Road and broader geopolitical objectives. Conversely, the absence of the United States, under President Trump’s decision not to attend, sent a clear signal of disengagement and skepticism toward the summit’s agenda. This absence not only highlighted the fragility of the U.S. influence in Africa but also revealed how American policy can inadvertently create space for other countries to fill the leadership vacuum.

The United States boycott also reflects deeper ideological and strategic tensions, African nations have sought to use the G20 platform to foreground issues such as debt sustainability, equitable development, and climate transition—topics that align closely with Chinese interests and the priorities of the Global South. The American absence, whether interpreted as a protest or as a tactical attempt to constrain the summit’s outcomes, exposed a growing gap between U.S. global governance priorities and the evolving agenda of emerging economies.

For African leaders, this moment serves as both a challenge and an opportunity: it allows them to assert greater agency in shaping the multilateral agenda while demonstrating that international cooperation can advance even in the absence of traditional Western support.

From a broader perspective, the 2025 G20 Summit illustrates how Africa is no longer a passive stage for great power competition. The continent is increasingly capable of advancing its own developmental objectives, whether through securing infrastructure investment, negotiating better trade terms, or influencing global policy discussions. China’s presence strengthens its positioning as a reliable partner, but the U.S. absence simultaneously underscores the limitations of coercive or selective engagement strategies. The competition is thus not merely a matter of economic or military influence; it is also about narrative control, legitimacy, and the capacity of African nations to assert sovereignty and shape the rules of global governance.

The U.S.–China presence in Africa is no longer a narrow contest over commercial contracts or port concessions; it is evolving into an engagement on how development, security, and governance are defined on the continent. China’s decades-long infrastructure push and trade penetration have converted material ties (loans, railways, ports, minerals) into durable diplomatic leverage and normative influence: African states increasingly measure partners by delivery and non-interference rather than by conditionality tied to liberal governance models.

This pattern rests on observable shifts in trade and lending: China’s two-way trade with Africa surged to record levels in 2021 and Chinese development lending and FOCAC-era commitments have placed Beijing in a structurally significant position in many capitals.

A series of U.S. policy decisions in recent years has visibly eroded Washington’s standing among African publics and elites, during President Trump’s first term, the lack of appointed ambassadors across multiple African capitals created a diplomatic vacuum, signaling disengagement at the highest levels. The administration’s travel bans—first in the 2017 round and again with a more Africa-focused “Travel Ban 2.0” in mid-2025—deepened the sense that Africans were being intentionally excluded from mobility and exchange opportunities.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) in September 2025, despite repeated appeals from African leaders, reinforced the perception that Washington is deprioritizing long-term economic partnerships. The suspension of major aid programs such as PEPFAR, credited with saving millions of lives, added to the narrative that the United States is retreating from its historical commitments to African development. Together, these moves have nudged African societies and governments toward alternative partners, with China emerging as the most capable and politically receptive rival.

However, there is normative competition over governance models;
Beijing is deliberately translating material presence into an alternative governance narrative — one that privileges sovereignty, “development-first” pragmatism, and multilateral reform led from the Global South. The Global Governance Initiative (GGI) that China unveiled in September 2025 is the clearest public articulation of this strategy: it frames China as a proposer of new multilateral architecture designed to make global governance “more just and equitable,” explicitly appealing to countries that resent current Western-dominated institutions. The GGI therefore functions less as abstract rhetoric and more as an instrument to legitimize China’s on-the-ground, sovereignty-centered model of assistance in Africa.

Concurrently, recent U.S. policy moves under the Trump administration — immigration restrictions, visa-bond pilot programs, and shifts away from traditional development mechanisms — have eroded American attractiveness among publics and elites in Africa. These measures, combined with retrenchment of legacy aid platforms, risk converting U.S. power into a narrowly transactional posture rather than a broad-based development partner. Where Washington is perceived as transactional or exclusionary, Beijing’s “we build, you keep sovereignty” messaging gains traction — especially when China couples visible project delivery with cultural and educational diplomacy.

Beijing has viewed the recent shifts in U.S. policy not as a threat but as an opportunity to expand its influence and reinforce its narrative across the continent. China has increasingly portrayed Western actors as inconsistent partners who undervalue African agency, positioning itself instead as a supporter of equality, partnership, and non-interference. To anchor this narrative, it has intensified diplomatic outreach, multiplied high-level exchanges, expanded scholarship programs, and strengthened cultural diplomacy designed to deepen societal and elite ties. Economically, China continues to entrench its role as Africa’s largest trading partner, while its companies dominate the construction of transport corridors, energy systems, ports, and government complexes. Many African governments view Chinese financing as more predictable and accessible than U.S. engagement, which is often interpreted as narrowly focused on political conditions or resource access. Consequently, emerging powers are now frequently perceived as more reliable secondary partners to China than the United States is.

This strategic environment has also enabled China to expand its political influence in multilateral forums. Research indicates that African voting behavior at the UN General Assembly aligns more closely with Beijing’s diplomatic patterns than with the distribution of U.S. aid, a development that contributed to Washington’s decision to dismantle USAID.

However, recent U.S. mediation efforts have highlighted the evolving nature of American diplomacy. The U.S.–Qatar–facilitated peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, though widely welcomed, was closely linked to Washington’s bid to secure access to critical minerals. Contracts awarded to U.S.-backed companies like Kobold for cobalt, lithium, and copper illustrate how conflict resolution, commercial strategy, and geopolitical competition are increasingly intertwined. Washington is now attempting to regain lost ground  in sectors such as mining, signaling a broader shift toward more transactional engagement.

African governments are actively navigating the dynamics without committing to either camp. Leaders across the continent are committed to maximize their strategic and economic gains, pursuing partnerships with both Washington and Beijing. Angola’s simultaneous embrace of Chinese Belt and Road financing and the U.S.-supported Lobito Corridor exemplifies this calibrated approach, turning it into negotiating strength. Yet public opinion shows a clear divergence. Afrobarometer surveys consistently reveal more positive perceptions of China than of the United States, driven by China’s visible infrastructure contributions, its non-intrusive political posture, and its sustained, on-the-ground presence. This favorable public sentiment has bolstered China’s soft-power position, even as the United States intensifies its efforts to compete for influence across the continent.

African states today enjoy unprecedented strategic flexibility, largely due to China’s fast, unconditional financing model and its broader Global Governance Initiative (GGI). In the short term, this model empowers governments with swift access to capital, the ability to launch major infrastructure projects, and greater autonomy from Western political conditionalities. Leaders can negotiate better terms, diversify partnerships, and deliver rapid development gains that bolster domestic legitimacy. Yet this very flexibility risks weakening institutional foundations over time. When large-scale projects bypass competitive procurement, parliamentary oversight, or public disclosure, executive power grows at the expense of accountability bodies. Similarly, when Chinese firms import their own technical systems, African institutions receive infrastructure but not the parallel bureaucratic or regulatory capabilities needed to sustain it. What begins as strategic autonomy and accelerated development can evolve into dependency on a single external partner for technology, standards, and finance — subtly reshaping internal governance dynamics in favor of executive dominance and limiting long-term sovereignty.

The other important thing is that Africa has emerged as a central arena in the U.S.-China engagement over critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, and rare earth elements, which are essential for electric vehicles, renewable energy, and advanced technologies. Over the past two decades, China has secured a dominant position through the Belt and Road Initiative, combining infrastructure investments with long-term mining contracts and controlling both extraction and processing, particularly in resource-rich countries like the DRC, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The United States, recognizing China’s entrenched advantage, has pursued alternative strategies, including partnerships with the EU, Canada, Japan, and Australia, investment through the Development Finance Corporation, and initiatives like the Lobito Corridor Project, aiming to diversify supply chains, enhance local value addition, and promote sustainable mining practices. Nevertheless, U.S. efforts face structural obstacles, including China’s long-standing relationships with African governments, state-backed financing, and deep infrastructure ties. The Trump administration’s “America First” approach, combined with trade policies and selective engagement, further shapes the competitive environment, potentially limiting the U.S.’s ability to quickly challenge China’s dominance. The outcome of this approach will profoundly influence Africa’s economic development, the governance of mineral sectors, global supply chains, and the clean energy transition, leaving African nations with strategic choices that could define the long-term benefits derived from their resource wealth.

Future Scenarios:

1) Managed Competition — Duopoly with Bargains (Most Probable)
Under Trump, the United States reinserts itself into Africa through aggressive commercial diplomacy and selective security partnerships, but without restoring traditional development aid mechanisms. This creates a calibrated scenario in which Washington aims to weaken China’s engagement in critical minerals and logistics corridors while avoiding full confrontation. African states leverage this competitive environment to extract higher royalties, stronger local-content obligations, and more flexible financing terms, effectively playing both sides for strategic gain. Governance outcomes, however, remain mixed: the U.S. approach is transactional and market-driven, while China’s GGI embeds an alternative normative logic emphasizing sovereignty-first cooperation. The result is a hybrid governance landscape in which Western transparency norms coexist uneasily with China’s performance-oriented, state-led model, giving African governments immediate bargaining power but producing incremental — not transformative — governance reforms.

2) Strategic Escalation — Zero-Sum Contest (High-Risk Trajectory)
With evolving dynamics, Africa becomes a primary arena for strategic competition: Washington weaponizes industrial policy and resource access, applying sanctions, investment restrictions, and explicit diplomatic pressure to counter Chinese influence; Beijing responds by deepening its security footprint, expanding GGI-based financing mechanisms, and accelerating institutional alternatives that bypass Western oversight. African governments face narrowing strategic space as partnerships increasingly come with geopolitical costs or conditional alignments. Governance systems become more vulnerable to distortions: high-dependence states experience executive-centric contracting, opaque renegotiations, and shrinking legislative oversight.

3) Institutional Recalibration — Multilateral Reset (Optimistic but Plausible)
A convergence of African diplomatic pressure, global economic interdependence, and strategic recalculation in Washington pushes both the U.S. and China toward a managed détente. Trump’s administration re-engages multilaterally through expanded development finance and selective debt relief, while China positions the GGI not as a rival system but as a complementary pillar to existing institutions, incorporating safeguards on transparency, sustainability, and debt risk. The G20 (led by South Africa) becomes a platform for reconciling these models, producing hybrid governance standards that integrate Chinese priorities—industrialization, state capacity, infrastructure—with Western commitments to accountability and rule-based transparency. African states benefit from diversified finance, enhanced policy space, and a governance framework that strengthens institutional capacity rather than bypassing it, enabling a more sustainable balance between sovereignty, development, and global rules.

Conclusion

The U.S.–China engagement in Africa illustrates a modern form of global competition in which economic influence, resource access, and diplomatic leverage intersect. China’s extensive investments have reshaped African economies, while the United States seeks to maintain influence through targeted engagement and partnerships.

The 2025 G20 Summit in Johannesburg underscores the strategic importance of Africa in this context. By hosting the summit, African nations assert their role in global governance and push for development-focused agendas, even as geopolitical tensions are evident. The summit represents both a reflection of existing power struggles and an opportunity for African states to convert competition into tangible developmental gains. How effectively African nations navigate this landscape could determine whether they shape the approach on their own terms or remain subject to the strategic interests of external powers.

In sum, the U.S.–China engagement in Africa, magnified by the context of the Johannesburg G20 Summit, reveals a shift in the global order. African nations are increasingly central actors capable of converting external competition into strategic gains. While China’s engagement provides consistent incentives, the U.S. absence demonstrates that unilateral disengagement or antagonistic tactics can backfire, reducing influence and opening space for rival powers. The summit, therefore, is both a reflection of the ongoing competition and a potential inflection point for Africa’s role in shaping international economic and political governance.

About the author:

Rana Mohamed Abd El Aal Mazid, Associate Professor of Political Science; British University in Egypt.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China-Africa Institute.