Chief Executive Africa Policy Institute Over the last 24 years, China’s diplomatic footprint in Africa has risen meteorically, nearly eclipsing the influence of Africa’s traditional partners in the West. China’s magic is the Forum China-Africa Cooperation (Focac). Established in 2000 as the premier platform for policy dialogue and cooperation between China and Africa, Focac is manifestly the sharpest arrow in the quiver of China’s African policy.
The American-led West has upped the ante to roll back Beijing’s sway on the continent, setting off the fiercest geopolitical competition since the end of the Cold War. As China gears to host the 2024 Focac summit in its capital on September 4-6, 2024, its influence in Africa will be tested in a visibly public way. The summit, the fourth of its kind, means everything to China’s African policy.
But China’s pundits view Focac as still work in progress, looking forward to the day in the future when all the 55 heads of the African Union member states will attend Focac summits in Beijing. Focac 2024 is not business as usual. The summit’s theme — “Joining Hands to Advance Modernization and Build a High-Level China-Africa Community with a Shared Future” — reveals the deep intellectual dive China is taking in diplomacy to challenge the West’s global hegemony.
This becomes clear from Focac as both a policy and intellectual project. Primarily, the forum rests on a blend of two philosophical traditions. From the Chinese.