China, Not Russia, Is the Next Major U.S. Military Competitor in Africa

Editor’s Note: Africa, once again, is an arena for great power competition, and attention is focusing on the increased Russian security role there. Jason Warner, who directs research at the Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office, argues that China’s influence in Africa will be far more important over time. Beijing uses a variety of means, especially its economic power, to embed itself deeply in Africa, and this has long-term security implications.

Daniel Byman

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Since Russian private military contractor Wagner Group began operating in Africa in 2017—followed by its 2023 transformation into the Africa Corps—observers of African security politics have been squarely concerned with the newfound prominence that Russia has accrued in African military and security affairs. In Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic (CAR), Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, Moscow and its state-directed private military contractor have been accruing military and political clout around the continent. However, while Russia is the current influencer du jour in the African military space, Beijing, not Moscow, is the competitor about which Washington policymakers should be most concerned. While Russia’s flashy and at times brutal approach has captured observers’ attention in the short term, China’s far more measured and under-the-radar military influence strategy for Africa has much greater—and more threatening—staying power.

A Reckless and Feckless Russian Africa Strategy

Russia’s strategy to gain military influence in Africa over the past seven years is a high-wire act that assumes that high risks can potentially beget high rewards. Moscow has tried to gain influence on a shoestring by providing insecure African leaders (especially military juntas) personal protection and indiscriminate counterterrorism assistance via Africa Corps in exchange for Russian political influence and access to natural resources. This approach provides a rare and valuable commodity for insecure African leaders: utterly indiscriminate violence by a pseudo-great power, complete with global diplomatic cover and a shield from international critique. It is a slipshod yet currently effective approach built on ephemeral, short-term gains with little evidence of a long-term, strategic approach. Indeed, observers like Christopher Faulkner and his colleagues note that “Russia’s Sahel strategy, and arguably its Africa strategy writ large, promotes more disruption and chaos, not less.” Indeed, they are doubtful that Russia truly has an African strategy at all.

To the extent that it has one, Russia’s military “strategy” is both unsustainable in the long term and increasingly ineffective in the narrow goals it has in the short term. To be fair, Africa Corps has had some victories, including the recapture of Kidal, Mali, from Tuareg separatists in September 2023 and the suppression of rebel groups in CAR. Yet, on the whole, their successes in Africa are limited at best. In fact, the overall violence in the locations where it operates has not decreased. For instance, in Niger, trends show that violence has increased, and the presence of Russian private military contractors across theaters has been linked to increased violence toward civilians. The Wagner Group’s complicity in abetting the Malian military in massive human rights abuses—notably the massacre in Moura in March 2022, in which an excess of 500 civilians were killed—has been well documented.  Civilians view the collaboration between their national militaries and Africa Corps as greater threats of violence than the jihadist groups they are ostensibly fighting.

The limits of Russia’s African military strategy and its almost-exclusive focus on the purveyance of military contractors have been on full display recently. In May 2024, Russia and the Wagner Group suffered their deadliest day in Africa when Tuareg separatists allied with al-Qaeda-aligned fighters ambushed and killed at least six Russian contractors and 24 Malian soldiers in the Malian town of Tinzaouaten, on the Algerian border. After the attack, the so-so reputation of Africa Corps took a substantial hit from the African demand side, and on the labor supply side, the attractiveness of joining the military contractor’s operations in Africa, which had been portrayed as being easier, more lucrative, and safer than other locations, also declined. (Russia had already been noted as struggling to meet its recruitment goals; the Africa Corps deployment to Niger was delayed due to Russia’s inability to fulfill its recruitment quotas.)

A second major hit for Africa Corps in Africa has been their inability to fulfill the even more limited task of protecting their patron regimes. Attacks in and near Sahelian capitals, where the juntas who employ Africa Corps live, have become more common. Notable in this regard were the rattling dual attacks in Bamako, Mali, in September 2024, in which Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, an al-Qaeda affiliate, targeted the main international airport and national gendarmerie. Attacks like these have led observers to take seriously the prospect of the fall of the regime in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—the three Russian-supported Sahelian states—which could lead to the creation of a contiguous jihadist state akin to the swathes of Iraq and Syria under Islamic State control from 2014 to 2017. This is hardly the sort of conversation an African client state wants to hear. Collectively, these Africa Corps losses have led to what has been referred to as the “image crumble” of Russia and its military contractors in Africa and prompted analysts to ask if Russia has hit a ceiling in its Africa policy.

China’s Very Demure, Very Mindful Military Influence Strategy

For its part, China’s growing military ambitions in Africa are threatening precisely because they appear not to be. Beijing’s outreach has been respectful and superficially uncontroversial. This makes it, in most respects, dangerous because it is proceeding relatively unnoticed. Where Russia’s African military strategy is brash, violence-centric, and chaotic, China’s is quiet, nonviolent, boringly technical, and profoundly, delicately measured. Moscow and Beijing are, in some senses, polar opposites.

Beijing’s security cooperation with African states tends to focus on technical—not combat—training; police—not military—training; and more broadly on economic—and not security—phenomena. Indeed, China’s impulse to disavow its search for military influence while quietly scrambling for it is the hallmark of its current ethos in Africa. While China has sought to rhetorically downplay its leadership in African security affairs, expressing a “reluctance to appear as if it is dictating to the continent,” this is increasingly ringing hollow. The past few months have been marked by analysis underscoring the growing militarization of China’s Africa policy, China’s increased counterterrorism ambitions in Africa, and the recent “unprecedented Chinese emphasis on its role in security on the continent” during the September 2024 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit.

The list of nuanced Chinese efforts to present itself as a responsible, nonthreatening military partner in Africa is long. One of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) most common military engagement efforts in Africa is through professional military education, rather than more traditional joint combat training or deployments. China has prioritized nonkinetic anti-terrorism efforts (understanding and addressing the root causes of radicalization, which it views to be poverty) rather than a kinetic counterterrorism approach focused on killing the radicalized, the core of the Russian approach to African security. Chinese military engagements in Africa are known to be more focused in African capitals, in contrast to the expeditionary and less diplomatic ethos of the Russian military approach, and Chinese security companies are highly regulated and disallowed from carrying arms internationally (thus giving them an air of responsibility, especially compared to Russian military contractors). When it comes to security cooperation, China also appears to be assiduous in its desire not to frame security cooperation with African countries as a means to compete with other major countries. For instance, Corbus van Staden has noted that while Russia has encouraged the use of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to facilitate cooperation with African countries to block U.S. and European influence, China has rejected such an approach. Beijing’s attempts to demonstrate a military-lite footprint in Africa have precedence, as seen in China’s first military drill in Africa. Held in June 2009 with Gabon, the drill, which focused on anodyne humanitarian evacuations and was named “Peace Angel,” could not sound more sinless if it tried.

Coupled with the carefully nonbelligerent framing of its military presence, China’s proclivity for economic-centered, nontraditional military engagement is a second pillar at the core of its seemingly nonthreatening approach to growing its African military posture. Indeed, the M-DIME Research Project, which I co-lead at the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office, has found that, in country after country, China’s primary means of gaining military influence in Africa is via nonmilitary instruments, particularly trade in military-relevant strategic sectors and commodities. In contrast, Beijing’s least used instrument to gain military influence is perhaps what would be considered one of the most conventional ones, formal bilateral military engagements. Echoing these findings, Paul Nantulya notes that, for the PLA, “nonmilitary activities … far outweigh military exercises and operations as a mechanism” for political and military influence in Africa.

China’s primary rationales for initially engaging in African security were its entwined goals of protecting its economic investments in Africa and the Chinese citizens who work at these ventures. Indeed, this elision between economics and security is at the core of the current framing of China’s military rise as innocuous. Port improvements ostensibly used for improving trade have become military bases in Djibouti; satellites used for improving telecommunications have been used for reconnaissance; investments in African urban environments via Smart City technology have funneled information from African countries to Beijing; economic underwriting for building African international organizations like the African Union has resulted in Chinese-built infrastructure being bugged; the solution to fighting African terrorism is more Chinese investment to reduce poverty; and economic fora like FOCAC morph to become locations of military and security dialogues. Economic assistance is Beijing’s Trojan horse, sneaking military influence into Africa.

This is not to say that China’s quietly aggressive military strategy in Africa is only about the deft deployment of nontraditional military influence instruments. To the extent that most U.S. observers track Chinese military ambitions in Africa, their focus has historically been focused on Chinese basing arrangements, especially the 2017 opening of its naval base in Djibouti. However, the more pressing issue is China’s desire to establish a second military base on the Atlantic coast. China has already been in talks with Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. Further, China’s coordination of and participation in joint exercises with Tanzania and Mozambique in August 2024 and its hosting of the first and second Horn of Africa Peace Conferences in 2022 and 2024 underscore that not all of its military ambitions are hidden behind a curtain.

China’s growing military ambitions in Africa can be seen via its all-out efforts to use multilateral organizations as conduits for influence. China’s primary deployment of military forces in Africa has been through UN peacekeepers—China contributes far more peacekeeping troops to the United Nations than any other permanent member (P5) state, and most of these are deployed to Africa. Additionally, also at the United Nations, China has sought to serve as a norm entrepreneur dictating the ideological and rhetorical dynamics of the current military operational environment. Meanwhile, China has used other fora to deepen its financial and educational ties to African militaries. For instance, in the opening speech of the September 2024 FOCAC summit, “Chinese President Xi Jinping promised to provide Africa with approximately $140 million in grants for military assistance; training for 6,000 military personnel and 1,000 police and law enforcement officers; participation in joint military exercises, training, and patrols; and invitations for 500 young African military officers to visit China.”

Watching the Right Rival

Russia’s approach to African military influence has been successful in its goals in the short term, but its staying power is deeply questionable. The likelihood of Moscow’s security pyrotechnics fizzling out is high, but not without burning many regimes along the way when it comes crashing down. It will be difficult for the Russian private military contractors to continue to provide autocratic governments with unfettered military assistance, especially as backlash to the Russian outfits grows, and violence increases, from the very African terrorist groups that they are present to fight. In contrast, China is quietly setting the stage for long-term, stable, and efficient military relationships in numerous locations—and via innumerable conduits—on the continent. To the extent that the United States has a vested interest in not losing African allies and the opportunity that friendship with them presents, it should recognize that China, not Russia, is the main one to watch.