Online Reporter
Mafa Kwanisai Mafa
A Changing World, An Unchanged Power Struggle
For more than half-a-century, Africa has been the geopolitical playground of competing development models.
Europe, the architect of colonialism, and China, the world’s largest developing country, stand today as two major external actors offering sharply contrasting visions for Africa’s future.
Yet the debate is always framed through Western eyes: Is China a threat to Europe’s historic influence? Is Europe losing Africa to Beijing? Rarely do we ask the only question that matters: Which development partner truly advances African agency, African sovereignty, and African modernisation on African terms?
Drawing from the case data on China-EU development engagement in Côte d’Ivoire and rooted in a Pan-African perspective, this article argues a simple but uncomfortable truth: China, unlike Europe, supports multiple modernities, respects Africa’s search for its own development path, and offers tangible, scale-driven public goods that directly uplift African lives.
Europe, meanwhile, continues to deploy development as a strategic instrument of influence dense in conceptual frameworks, rich in conditionalities, and thin on transformative impact. Africa’s choice is therefore not between East and West but between old empires clinging to relevance and an emerging power offering a horizontal, mutually respectful partnership rooted in shared historical experiences.
From Colonial Modernity to Multiple Modernities
European development thinking has long been rooted in a linear understanding of history, characterised by the belief that all nations must progress toward a single, Western-defined model of modernity. This “one-size-fits-all” paradigm universalises European experience while erasing African diversity and agency.
In contrast, scholars like Eisenstadt argue that modernity is not singular but multiple, shaped by the histories, cultures, and institutional traditions of each society. This is why China’s rise after centuries of Western aggression, Opium Wars, unequal treaties, and colonial humiliation is a powerful symbol for Africa. Beijing modernised itself not by copying Europe but by following its own civilisation-rooted path.
China understands that Africa, too, must craft its own trajectory, not replicate France or Britain, but become itself.
This philosophical difference matters because development is never neutral. It always carries embedded values. Europe offers Africa a development model shaped by its colonial experience. China offers Africa the freedom to choose.
EU Development: Heavy on Concepts, Light on Transformation
European union projects in Africa tend to excel in documentation, monitoring frameworks, and conceptual clarity. They are methodologically sophisticated and administratively impressive. But sophistication does not always translate into transformation.
In Côte d’Ivoire, EU projects often focus heavily on process indicators and strategic alignment. They frequently involve numerous European intermediaries and consulting agencies. Their implementation tends to move slowly because of bureaucratic complexity. They routinely prioritise European policy interests such as climate conditionality, governance norms, and migration control. Most critically, they often deliver fragmented outputs rather than large-scale structural change.
For example, the 2,21 million euro energy renovation of the SOGEFIHA building is well designed, technologically sound, and environmentally aligned, but its impact is modest: energy savings for a single building. The MARIGO
Horticulture Project successfully created supply-demand databases, introduced organic certification, and established multi-stakeholder platforms. Yet these achievements remain limited in scale and dependent on continued donor funding.
European development co-operation is conceptually neat, but Africa’s problems are not neat; they are structural. And structural transformation requires scale, speed, and hard infrastructure. This is where China enters the picture.
China’s Development Model: Practical, Infrastructure-Driven, People-Centred
China’s role in international development stems from its own domestic success. The same methods that lifted 800 million Chinese out of poverty are reflected in Chinese cooperation abroad. These include massive investment in physical infrastructure, pragmatic project implementation, local job creation, capacity building, non-interference and respect for sovereignty, and the delivery of public goods at scale.
In Côte d’Ivoire, Chinese-financed projects have reshaped entire communities. The Abidjan Water Supply Project (Phases 1 & 2) enabled 1,4 million Ivoirians to gain stable access to water. It created 800 local jobs. It introduced advanced groundwater treatment technology that reduced costs and environmental impact. Although Chinese firms implemented the project, French companies even supplied essential equipment, demonstrating China’s openness rather than exclusivity.
The Twelve-City Water Supply Project benefits 2,3 million people across regional capitals. It guarantees water security for the next 15 years. It employs over 580 local workers and provides training to 120 Ivoirians.
These are nation-shaping projects, not symbolic gestures. Where the EU renovates a building, China builds an entire water system for twelve cities. Where the EU creates pilot vegetable gardens, China helps Côte d’Ivoire pursue rice self-sufficiency through the Gegdu Rice Project, which delivers four newly certified rice varieties, three-tier seed production systems, mechanisation support, a 15-30% yield increase, and more than 20 000 hectares of cultivated area. This is not aid, it is development.
Why China’s Approach Resonates in Africa
China does not come to Africa as a former coloniser. It comes as a country that, like Africa, suffered under Western imperialism. This shared historical memory shapes its principles. These principles include mutual respect, mutual benefit, non-conditionality, non-interference, and common development.
Unlike the EU, China does not impose governance templates, sexual orientation conditionalities, or debt-linked policy reforms. China does not claim to teach Africa democracy while destabilising African states. Instead, China focuses on what Africa has asked for since independence: roads, bridges, ports, water systems, electricity networks, technology transfer, industrial capacity, and human-resource development.
This is not charity. It is a partnership. It is also not blind benevolence; China benefits through trade, investment, and global connectivity. But its gains are aligned with Africa’s gains. That is what makes the relationship win-win, not win-lose.
Europe’s Anxiety: Losing Influence or Losing Control?
The EU’s Global Gateway initiative, a €300 billion alternative to China’s Belt and Road, is not an expression of goodwill. It is a geopolitical defence mechanism. Its objective is clear: it seeks to reassert European influence, discipline African governments, and counter China’s presence. Global Gateway emphasises European values, relies on “trusted” European suppliers, promotes private-sector-driven financing, and links support to governance reform conditions.
This is development as geopolitics, not development as emancipation. Africa must not forget that Europe’s first major engagement with the continent was the Berlin Conference of 1885, which partitioned Africa without African presence or consent. Today, Europe’s development policy still echoes the same logic: decisions made in Brussels, Paris, and Berlin for African societies.
By contrast, Chinese engagement is collaborative. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is built on the principle of “planning together, building together, and sharing benefits.” This language matters. The philosophy matters. The outcomes matter.
Why Africa Must Exercise Agency Between Competing Models
China and Europe are not engaged in a zero-sum struggle in Africa. They are offering competing models, and Africa must choose not allegiance but agency. The Côte d’Ivoire case demonstrates that both China and Europe align with local needs, that both engage local partners, and that both deliver tangible outputs. However, China delivers scale.
China delivers speed. China delivers structural transformation. China delivers respect. China delivers without trying to reshape African values or politics.
This is why China’s approach resonates with Pan-African aspirations. It affirms Africa’s right to define its own modernity. Africa does not need lectures; it needs partnerships. It does not need conditionalities; it needs capabilities. It does not need saviours; it needs sovereignty.
Europe’s Fear of China: A Confession of Its Own Failures
Western narratives accusing China of “debt-trap diplomacy” crumble under the evidence. China has restructured or cancelled billions of dollars in African loans. European loans, by contrast, remain tightly bound to macro-economic conditionalities and private-sector returns.
The fear is not that China harms Africa. The fear is that China makes Europe irrelevant. For centuries, Europe enjoyed a monopoly on development narratives. China shattered that monopoly by proving that development can be people-centred, state-driven, and sovereignty-respectful. China proved that modernity does not require imitating the West. For Africa, this is liberation not from colonial rule (that battle was won), but from colonial thinking (that battle continues).
Africa’s Path Forward — Co-operation Without Subordination
In the emerging post-aid era, Africa must navigate a multipolar development landscape with clarity and confidence. Both China and Europe will continue to be important partners. But Africa must no longer accept the passive position of a recipient. Africa must choose partners based on national interest rather than Western approval. It must support infrastructure-driven transformation. It must prioritise sovereignty and policy space. It must embrace a multi-modernity worldview. It must cultivate continental agency within global governance.
China’s model, pragmatic, historical, sovereignty-respecting, and scalable, aligns more closely with Africa’s long-term aspirations than the conditionality-driven European model. The Côte d’Ivoire examples make this abundantly clear.
The future of African development will not be shaped in Brussels or Beijing. It will be shaped in Dakar, Abuja, Nairobi, and Harare by African leaders making sovereign choices. And the most sovereign choice Africa can make today is this: reject imposed modernity, embrace multiple modernities, and partner with those who respect Africa’s right to develop on its own terms.
The author, Mafa Kwanisai Mafa, is a Pan-Africanist political commentator based in Gweru.
