Africa's New Era: Trust and Modernisation Triumph Over Geopolitical Hurdles

At a time of heightened geopolitical fragility and protectionist policies undermining multilateral cooperation, China has demonstrated its commitment to work with the African continent to advance shared modernization and prosperity.

China and South Africa jointly unveiled the Initiative on Cooperation Supporting Modernization in Africa on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) Summit held in Johannesburg on November 22, 2025. The Initiative demonstrates confidence in Africa despite swelling geopolitical headwinds threatening economic and political stability in the continent.

China has been Africa’s largest trading and development partner for over 16 years. The China-Africa trade volume is massive and growing, reaching around $296 billion in 2024. The fragmented geopolitical order presents major risks to the fragile economies on the African continent.

Divisive external interests and transactional, coercive, and unreliable partnerships threaten much needed African political and economic unity to drive collective continental growth and modernization to meet the goals of the Agenda 2063 and the Africa Free Trade Agreement, or African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

According to the African Union (AU) 2025 Africa Integration Report, efforts towards the full realisation of Agenda 2063 and the AfCFTA could be hindered by external headwinds, including global protectionism, rising debt, and shrinking development assistance.

The report highlights the structural reforms required to deepen regional and continental integration and to accelerate the objectives of Agenda 2063 and AfCFTA. The African Union (AU) 2025 Africa Integration Report is a key decision-support tool to monitor and advance Africa’s integration agenda.

The report further suggests that the hostile external geopolitical environment could compound intra-continental economic challenges. As highlighted in the State of Africa's Infrastructure Report 2025, Africa faces many challenges ranging from infrastructure bottlenecks, uneven political will, limited statistical capacity, and slow progress towards customs unions and service liberalization.

Efforts to address these challenges by accelerating regional integration and economic development could be disrupted under the hostile geopolitical environment, which has resulted in protectionist and coercive economic and political policies. Africa holds an exceptionally large share of the world's critical mineral resources, making it central to the global energy transition and high-tech manufacturing.

While the rich natural resources are attracting a lot of global interest, much of the value is still captured outside the continent, highlighting the need for improved economic governance, policies allowing for local beneficiation, and reliable, trusted external partnerships and cooperation. The continent contains significant proportions of key minerals such as cobalt, with about 70% of global production coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It is also home to major reserves of manganese, platinum-group metals, rare earth elements, graphite, lithium, and nickel — essential resources for batteries, solar panels, electric vehicles, and hydrogen technologies.

The State of Africa’s Infrastructure Report 2025 says that the continent holds over $1.1trillion in domestic capital from pensions, insurance funds, public development banks, and sovereign wealth funds which could be unlocked for intra-continental infrastructure development.

Combined with enabling reliable international partnerships, abundant natural resources and domestic capital could play significant roles in financing core infrastructure sectors such as energy, transport and logistics, industry, and digital infrastructure to catalyze socio-economic transformation and continental modernization.

The continent has made immense progress in advancing the goals of Agenda 2063 on theback of accelerated continental integration under the AfCFTA. The African Union's Agenda 2063 is a strategic plan for socio-economic transformation aiming to make Africa a prosperous, integrated, and peaceful continent by 2063.

Agenda 2063 outlines a framework of goals, priority areas, and targets based on five-year implementation plans to track progress towards inclusive growth, continental integration, good governance, and security based on the principles of Pan-Africanism.

The AfCFTA is a flagship project of the African Union's Agenda 2063, focusing on market integration, industrialization, and infrastructure development to achieve sustainable growth and job creation by facilitating free movement of goods and people in the continent.

The Agreement aims to establish the world's largest free trade area, covering a market of 1.4 billion people with a combined GDP of over $3.4 trillion, and reduce intra-continental trade barriers through the elimination of import duties and other non-tariff barriers to boost intra-African trade potentially by 52.3% in the next few decades. The AfCFTA could boost intra-African trade, foster industrialization, promote sustainable economic growth, and create jobs.

Landmark frameworks such as the Abuja Treaty and flagship initiatives, including the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) and the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) which seeks to remedy general insecurity and conflict in the continent, suggest significant continental progress in the implementation of the Agenda 2063 and the AfCFTA. The Initiative on Cooperation Supporting Modernization in Africa strongly supports African homegrown institutions and processes, including the Agenda 2063 and the AfCFTA, in fostering continental stability and modernization.

The parties to the Initiative also committed to supporting the implementation of Agenda 2063 Second Ten-Year Implementation Plan (STYIP) as a critical phase towards the realization of Agenda 2063 and the broader goals of the AfCFTA.

The Initiative reaffirms closer Africa-China cooperation embracing the pan-African spirit of Ubuntu and calls for multilateral support to enable Africa to achieve people centred modernization that puts people first and is just and equitable. It also supports African countries in their efforts to independently explore modernization paths suited to their national conditions in pursuit of their aspirations.

It emphasises the need to uphold the principles of justice and equitability, respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of African countries and the right of African people to independently choose their development paths and social systems. African leaders have historically grappled with external interventionism

in their internal affairs, a phenomenon that is repeating itself; hence, calls for non-interference in internal affairs of African countries at this moment are timely.

Furthermore, the Initiative seeks to drive industrialization and infrastructure development, combat poverty, improve governance, and foster peace and stability.

Many countries in Africa are embroiled in conflicts that undermine economic transformation. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says that Africa hosts about 40% of the world's ongoing armed conflicts, with roughly 50 active clashes across the continent as of late 2025.

The conflicts have displaced more than 40 million people and contribute to continental insecurity, undermining collective efforts towards regional integration and economic modernization.The Initiative on Cooperation Supporting Modernization in Africa builds on commitments made at the 2024 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing in 2024.

The FOCAC is a multilateral framework established in 2000 for dialogue and cooperation between China and African countries. In this regard the Initiative reflects a shared vision for a new era of African development that prioritizes green infrastructure, sustainable mining, social advancement, and inclusive economic growth.

China’s support aligns with the broader African ambition to elevate Africa’s voice in global governance and to create jobs for Africa’s young population through strengthened national and regional value chains boosting modernization in Africa.

China’s global leadership through institutions such as the Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the FOCAC, and the BRICS has provided new opportunities to strengthen strategic coordination and cooperation towards building a global community of development with a shared future.

The new initiative demonstrates confidence in and strong friendly relations between Africa, its people, and Chinese leaders and their people.

Gideon Chitanga, PhD is a political and international relations analyst.