China And The Telecommunications Revolution In Africa

Over the last 15 years, the African continent has undergone a telecommunications revolution, with hundreds of millions of Africans newly connected to each other and the rest of the world. How is this connected to China's rising engagement with the continent? What are the political economic implications? This paper contends that Chinese and African government motives, domestic contexts, and distinct methods, including principle of non-interference, diplomatic and financial backing, and contractual business guarantees, characterize Chinese participation in the development of African infrastructure for both resources and markets. The study shows that two dominant modes of engagement between China and Africa have emerged to wire Africa for the 21st century: infrastructure-for-resources and infrastructure-for-markets bargains. The effects are three-fold. First, these distinct modes of engagement shape the timing and pace of telecommunications growth. Second, political leaders have used China-Africa infrastructure bargains to their political advantage, which are not always beneficial to the public at large. Finally, the role China plays to supply equipment and build infrastructure contributes to the globalization of Chinese state-backed companies, state-owned and privately owned alike. These arguments are substantiated by a comparative case research design, which focuses analysis on the role of Chinese-African engagement in telecommunications between 2000 and 2015 in Angola and Nigeria, two African oil-producing countries that differ in political and economic aspects.