Does China–Africa Economic Partnership Following the Right Trajectory?

Although China was never a colonizing power, its economic relations with Africa can be traced to antiquity. However, meaningful economic partnership between China and Africa is a recent phenomenon. After a decade and more trade engagement with China, many African countries have been claiming that there is economic growth momentum induced in their respective economies. Despite the progress achieved in the past decades, cooperation between China and Africa also faces numerous challenges ahead. Key problems associated with China–African partnership are neither fully addressed nor satisfactorily contextualized in the current debate regarding China and Africa. There is optimism about the rise of China and India, and other south–south partners of Africa hoping that such a partnership offers a great chance to Africa in claiming twenty-first century. Here it should be underlined that if China follows the same old western principles towards Africa, the new economic partnership with China may end up with the usual win-lose scenario. However, such an extreme scenario may not happen in the twenty-first century when Africa has its own prominent continental institutions like AU, ECA, NEPAD and other local and international independent academic and research institutions that can alert the continent of such development. This study analyses the trade balance condition of the top 10 deficit African countries with China (Ethiopia, Kenya, Togo, Malawi, Morocco, Benin, Algeria, Liberia, Egypt and Nigeria) and calls for careful structural adjustments.