iStocks posted on You Tube on 15 June 2025 a 23-minute video titled "Africa Is Becoming the New Battleground: US vs China -- Who's Winning?"
There is a full-on competition between the United States and China for influence in Africa. This is a story of power and leverage between Washington and Beijing. The engagement models used in Africa by China and the US are very different. Beijing provides loans, construction companies, and often its own labor to build infrastructure projects across the continent. They are fast and avoid political conditionality but add to African debt. The US is transactional and wants to make deals by mobilizing the private sector. But they are slow, and the private sector often has difficulty raising financing.
For many years the US was the preferred partner of most African countries, but recent polls show that China is now the preferred partner. Recent US policy decisions affecting Africa have also harmed its reputation as a reliable partner. In the final analysis, Africans don't want to choose between China and the US, but they want the best deal they can get from both partners and others, including the European Union, Turkey, India, Japan, and South Korea.