The Africa Solar Belt Initiative: China's geopolitical chess game between energy dominance and raw material security – Image: Xpert.Digital
When technological export becomes a strategic lever – The reorganization of global dependencies in the age of the energy transition
Africa Solar Belt – The Chinese South-South Cooperation Initiative to Combat Climate Change
The Africa Solar Belt is a Chinese South-South cooperation initiative to combat climate change, officially launched at the first Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, in September 2023. The program aims to expand decentralized solar energy supply in African countries, particularly to provide electricity to rural areas without grid connection.
Objectives and scope
China has pledged 100 million yuan (approximately $14 million) to equip at least 50,000 African households with solar home systems between 2024 and 2027. The program represents China's strategic shift toward "small and beautiful" projects—smaller, decentralized initiatives focused on social benefits, as opposed to the traditional large-scale projects of the Belt and Road Initiative.
The initiative aims not only to supply households with electricity, but also to equip infrastructure facilities such as schools and health centers with solar energy, thereby improving the living conditions of the local population.
Participating countries and progress
Since its launch, China has signed bilateral memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with several African countries. The partner countries include:
- Chad: 4,300 solar systems
- São Tomé and Príncipe: 3,100 photovoltaic systems
- Togo
- Mali: Installation of 1,195 off-grid solar home systems and 200 solar streetlights in the village of Koniobla
- Burundi: 4,000 solar systems (agreed at the 2024 FOCAC Summit)
China has also held talks with a total of ten African countries, including Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. The five countries with signed agreements are expected to provide access to electricity to approximately 20,000 households.
Embedding in the larger context
The Africa Solar Belt is part of China's broader strategy to "green" its foreign investments in the energy sector. In 2021, China, along with 53 African countries and the African Union, committed to the "Declaration on China-Africa Cooperation on Combating Climate Change" to stop financing new coal-fired power projects abroad and instead increase investment in clean energy in Africa.
Chinese companies have already installed over 1.5 gigawatts of photovoltaic power plants in Africa. Flagship projects include the 50 MW solar power plant in Garissa, Kenya (generating over 76 million kWh annually) and the 100 MW project in Kabwe, Zambia, the largest of its kind in the country.
Africa Solar Belt: The turbo for Africa and China's energy transition
Despite the potential, both China and its African partners face significant implementation challenges. Experts point to difficulties such as the lack of reliable data to identify electricity demand, the development of sustainable business models for decentralized renewable energy projects, and the development of local technical capacities for operation and maintenance.
Africa's solar market is nevertheless showing considerable growth: 2.4 GW of new solar capacity was installed in 2024, and a 42% increase is expected for 2025. The continent boasts 60% of the world's best solar resources, but currently utilizes only a fraction of this potential—in 2023, only 3% of electricity generation came from solar energy.
The Africa Solar Belt represents an important step towards unlocking Africa's enormous solar potential while tackling energy poverty – around 600 million people on the continent currently live without access to electricity.
China's energy offensive in Africa: The strategic framework of a global power shift
The global energy transition has opened a new geopolitical arena in which China plays a dominant role. The Africa Solar Belt, officially announced at the first Africa Climate Summit in 2023, represents far more than a philanthropic climate protection project. With an initial commitment of 100 million yuan for the electrification of 50,000 African households through off-grid solar systems between 2024 and 2027, China is establishing a strategic narrative that intertwines three fundamental economic goals: the development of new sales markets for an overcapacity solar industry, the long-term securing of critical raw materials for its own energy transition, and the consolidation of geopolitical spheres of influence in a multipolar world order.
The magnitude of this strategy only becomes understandable in the context of China's overcapacity crisis. By the end of September 2025, China's solar industry reached an installed production capacity of 1.1 terawatts, roughly 1.5 times the entire peak load of the US power grid. This dramatic overproduction, driven by years of government subsidies and industrial policy guidance, led to a price collapse of over 30 percent for solar modules in 2024 and collective losses of the six largest Chinese solar manufacturers amounting to $2.8 billion in the first half of 2025 alone. In this context, Africa is becoming an indispensable outlet for Chinese export surpluses: Between June 2024 and June 2025, the continent imported solar panels with a capacity of 15 gigawatts from China, an increase of 60 percent over the previous year.
At the same time, China already controls 15 of 17 cobalt and copper mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has invested over $4.5 billion in lithium projects in Zimbabwe, Mali, and Namibia since 2021, and dominates 72 percent of the global cobalt market and 60 to 70 percent of lithium and graphite processing. This vertical integration of raw material extraction, processing, and final product manufacturing creates a chain of dependency that goes far beyond traditional colonial extraction patterns and establishes a new form of techno-industrial hegemony.
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Historical lines of development: From the Belt and Road Initiative to the Green Development Partnership
The roots of the Africa Solar Belt lie in the Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013, which invested over one trillion US dollars in infrastructure projects in more than 150 countries by 2024. In Africa, these investments initially focused on large-scale fossil fuel projects: Between 2000 and 2021, China's policy banks – the Export-Import Bank of China and the China Development Bank – granted 182 billion US dollars in loans, of which 15 percent went to fossil fuel projects and 12 percent to hydropower plants, while less than one percent went to solar and wind energy.
The decisive turning point occurred in 2021, when President Xi Jinping announced the end of Chinese financing for coal-fired power plants abroad. This announcement was due less to a sudden ecological insight than to the confluence of several factors: international criticism of China's climate record, the increasing cost parity of renewables, the excessive indebtedness of several African partner countries, and the strategic need to develop new markets for domestic excess capacity. The Declaration on China-Africa Cooperation on Combating Climate Change, adopted in 2021 by China, 53 African states, and the African Union, marked the formal transition to a Green Development Partnership.
At the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation 2024 in Beijing, this realignment was substantiated by a financing commitment of USD 50.7 billion for the period 2024-2027, which, however, deviated significantly from previous commitments: the share of pure loans was reduced in favor of a mix of trade finance, direct corporate investment, and targeted development assistance. This shift reflects both China's own economic slowdown – GDP growth fell from double-digit rates in the 2000s to below five percent in 2024 – and the lessons learned from failed major projects such as Ethiopia's Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway, which, at a total cost of USD four billion, never became profitable and led to protracted debt restructuring negotiations.
The historical development of China's engagement in Africa can thus be characterized as an evolution from resource-oriented extraction to debt-financed mega-infrastructure to a hybrid strategy that combines smaller-scale projects with long-term industrial penetration.
Economic mechanisms: actors, incentives and system dynamics
The economic model behind China's Solar Belt is based on a complex constellation of actors and incentive structures that combine state guidance with private sector expansion. On the Chinese side, there are three main players: State-run policy banks such as the Export-Import Bank of China finance large-scale projects with concessional loans, while state-owned corporations such as PowerChina, China Jiangxi Corporation, and CMOC handle technical implementation and are increasingly diversifying into raw material extraction. Private companies such as LONGi, JA Solar, and Trina Solar dominate module production and, faced with shrinking domestic margins, are aggressively seeking foreign markets.
On the African side, the field of actors varies considerably: While countries like Morocco, South Africa, and Egypt have established energy ministries, regulatory authorities, and partially privatized utilities, sub-Saharan Africa often lacks the institutional capacity to negotiate complex financing structures. Solar projects with a total capacity of nine gigawatts are currently being built in 45 of 54 African countries, with five countries—Algeria, Angola, Egypt, South Africa, and Zambia—accounting for 70 percent of this capacity.
The market mechanisms of this expansion follow a specific pattern: China offers integrated packages that combine financing, technology, construction, and often operations—a model that Western competitors can rarely replicate. These packages are typically offered at preferential terms—with interest rates between 2 and 4 percent and terms of 15 to 20 years—but are often tied to Chinese contractors and equipment and contain opaque clauses regarding security and dispute resolution.
The economic drivers on the Chinese side are evident: First, the export of surplus production capacity enables the stabilization of domestic companies and jobs. Second, infrastructure projects secure long-term access rights to raw materials – often through resource-backed loans, where oil, copper, or lithium are used for repayment. Third, the technological dependence of African energy systems on Chinese standards, patents, and spare parts creates lasting business relationships.
On the African side, three primary factors are driving demand: First, the massive electrification gap – 600 million people, 43 percent of the population, live without access to electricity, with particularly drastic deficits in sub-Saharan Africa, where 85 percent of the globally unelectrified live. Second, the structural underfinancing of the energy sector, with traditional Western donors and multilateral banks reducing their commitments after the 2008 financial crisis. Third, the climate policy commitments under the Paris Agreement and the African Union's Agenda 2063, which set ambitious targets for renewable energy without providing adequate financing instruments.
The system dynamics of this arrangement generate both positive and negative feedback loops: Positive effects arise from rapid cost reductions – solar panel prices have fallen by over 90 percent since 2010, making projects viable even in capital-poor regions. Negative dynamics arise from the emergence of technological lock-in effects that complicate subsequent diversification, as well as from the accumulation of government debt, which in several cases has already led to debt restructuring crises.
Current situation: data, indicators and structural challenges
The quantitative assessment of the Africa Solar Belt reveals both impressive growth dynamics and persistent structural problems. Between 2020 and 2024, 84 energy projects financed or built by China were identified in Africa, with a total capacity of over 32 gigawatts and investments of at least USD 33 billion. These projects are geographically distributed across 30 countries, with regional focuses in South Africa (35 projects), West Africa (22), East Africa (16), Central Africa (6), and North Africa (5).
The technology distribution shows a clear dominance of renewable energies: hydropower and solar lead the portfolio, complemented by gas, wind, coal, geothermal, biomass, and experimental wave energy systems. The rapid increase in pure solar projects is remarkable: In 2024, 2.5 gigawatts of solar capacity were installed on the continent, with forecasts predicting a jump to 3.4 gigawatts by 2025—an increase of 42 percent. By 2028, Africa's installed solar capacity is expected to rise to over 23 gigawatts, more than doubling.
The trade balances illustrate the economic asymmetry of the relationship: Bilateral trade between China and Africa reached a volume of US$222 billion in the first eight months of 2025, an increase of 15.4 percent over the same period last year. However, Chinese exports to Africa rose by 24.7 percent to US$140.79 billion, while African exports to China increased by only 2.3 percent to US$81.25 billion. This resulted in a trade deficit of US$59.55 billion for Africa in just eight months—almost on par with the overall deficit of US$61.93 billion for 2024.
The raw materials dimension illustrates China's strategic priorities: In 2020, China imported 90 percent of its cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and by 2024, Ivory Coast was China's third-largest nickel ore supplier. In Zimbabwe, which has Africa's largest and the world's fifth-largest lithium reserves, Chinese companies such as Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, Sinomine Resource Group, and Chengxin Lithium Group have invested over one billion US dollars since 2021. The Goulamina lithium mine in Mali alone, operated by Gangfeng Lithium, started production at the end of 2024 with a planned annual capacity of 506,000 tons of lithium concentrate in phase one, expandable to one million tons.
The challenges manifest themselves on several levels: First, despite massive investments, electrification rates remain low – 18 of the 20 least electrified countries in the world are located in Africa, with some states having less than 10 percent of the population accessing electricity. Second, in sub-Saharan Africa, population growth is outpacing electrification progress, so that the absolute number of people without access to electricity has virtually stagnated from 569 million in 2010 to 571 million in 2022. Third, many projects fail due to economic viability – the Kenyan Standard Gauge Railway, for example, does not generate enough revenue to cover operating costs, let alone service its $3.6 billion loan.
The debt situation is worsening in parallel: Africa's external public debt rose from USD 305 billion in 2010 to USD 702 billion in 2020, from 24 to 40 percent of regional GDP. China's share is estimated at 12 percent, with absolute loan volumes of USD 182 billion between 2000 and 2023. However, many of these loans are structured in a non-transparent manner, use commodity exports as collateral, and contain clauses that complicate debt restructuring with multilateral institutions.
Comparative case studies: Divergent development paths in Kenya, Morocco and Ethiopia
A detailed analysis of the different development trajectories in the integration of Chinese solar investments reveals the importance of institutional frameworks, strategic prioritization, and negotiating power for the outcome of such partnerships.
Kenya represents a comparatively successful case of adaptive energy policy. The country generates 87 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, with wind, solar, and geothermal power meeting all of the growth in demand since 2018. The flagship project, the 55-megawatt Garissa solar power plant, was built in 2018 by the China Jiangxi Corporation for $136 million and financed by the Export-Import Bank of China. The plant covers 85 hectares, supplies 70,000 households, and is the largest grid-connected solar power plant in East and Central Africa. Between 2010 and 2024, 44 Chinese energy projects were implemented in Kenya, primarily in the construction of transmission lines and generation capacity. Kenya largely avoided large-scale fossil-fuel projects and focused on decentralized renewable solutions that enable rural electrification.
Kenya's success is based on several factors: an ambitious national energy strategy, which began with the geothermal program in 2006, a functioning regulatory authority, and a diverse donor structure that creates negotiating options. Nevertheless, in 2024, Kenya imported 96 percent of its solar panels, 81 percent of its lithium-ion batteries, and 21 percent of its electric vehicles from China, demonstrating a significant technological dependence.
Morocco is pursuing a fundamentally different strategy, aimed at technological sovereignty and regional leadership. The country ranks second in Africa in renewable energy projects and aims to source more than 50 percent of its energy mix from renewables by 2025 and 80 percent by 2030. The Noor-Ouarzazate solar complex, one of the world's largest concentrated solar thermal plants with 580 megawatts, supplies 1.3 million households, serves two million people, and eliminates 800,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually. Crucially, Morocco deliberately pursued technological diversification in the Noor project by collaborating with Spanish, German, and Saudi consortia rather than relying exclusively on Chinese suppliers.
Morocco's approach combines large-scale solar thermal energy with wind power—the Jbel Lahdid wind farm added 270 megawatts in 2024—and ambitious export projects such as the Xlinks cable to the UK, which will transport Moroccan solar and wind power to Europe via a 3,800-kilometer submarine cable. This strategy reflects Morocco's geographical advantage, its historical ties to Europe, and a conscious positioning as an energy bridge between Africa and Europe.
Ethiopia, on the other hand, illustrates the risks of hasty debt-financed expansion. China invested over four billion US dollars in Ethiopia's energy sector between 2011 and 2018, accounting for over 50 percent of the newly added generating capacity. Renewable energy now accounts for 90 percent of Ethiopia's installed capacity, up from 33 percent in 2010. Chinese companies financed and built large hydropower dams and wind farms, including the 6,450-megawatt Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Africa's largest hydropower project.
However, the aggressive borrowing led to a debt crisis: Ethiopia owes various creditors approximately $30 billion, and the IMF considers its debt sustainability unsatisfactory. The Ethiopian government was forced to declare default in 2020 and has since been engaged in protracted debt restructuring negotiations under the G20 Common Framework, with China initially resisting generous debt relief. At the same time, the expected economic transformation through energy access failed to reach projected levels due to the lack of accompanying industrialization and market reforms.
Comparing these three cases demonstrates that successful management of Chinese energy investments requires institutional capacity, strategic diversification, and realistic economic viability assessments. Countries that integrate Chinese investments into broader national development strategies and cultivate alternative partners achieve better results than those that opportunistically accept maximum loan volumes without adequate absorption capacity or repayment strategies.
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Africa Solar Belt: China's green power – opportunity or trap?
Risks, distortions and structural power asymmetries
The fundamental contradictions of China's Africa Solar Belt manifest themselves at economic, social, and ecological levels and raise fundamental questions about the nature of this development partnership.
The debt trap debate dominates critical discussion. While Chinese officials and some researchers argue that China holds only 12 percent of Africa's external debt—compared to 35 percent held by Western private creditors—and thus exaggerates the debt trap narrative, this view neglects several problematic dimensions. First, Chinese loans are often structured in a non-transparent manner, utilize non-public contractual terms, include sovereignty waiver clauses in dispute settlements, and use strategic assets such as ports or mines as collateral. Second, lending often occurs without rigorous debt sustainability analyses, as used by multilateral institutions, causing countries with already high levels of debt to accumulate additional burdens.
Third, debt restructuring cases under the G20 Common Framework demonstrate that Chinese creditors accept significantly less generous terms than traditional Paris Club members, delaying the recovery of indebted countries. The cases of Zambia and Ethiopia document years of stalled negotiations, as China initially demanded comparable treatment with multilateral development banks, a position that ignores fundamental differences in mandates and risk structures.
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The social dimension of Chinese energy projects raises significant questions. Labor rights violations, inadequate health and safety standards, and a lack of local employment have been recurring criticisms. Zambia's Chinese-funded hydropower projects have witnessed protests by Zambian workers over poor working conditions. Systematic analyses show that only 76,000 jobs in the renewable energy sector have been created in Africa—less than one percent of the 10.3 million jobs in the sector globally. This reflects the practice of importing Chinese workers for key positions and using local employees primarily for unskilled work.
The International Energy Agency predicts that sub-Saharan Africa will need four million new jobs in the renewables sector by 2030 to achieve net-zero targets by 2050. However, there is a massive shortage of skilled workers, and existing training programs are fragmented and underfunded. Local content policies, such as those enshrined in Nigeria's Electricity Act 2023, which mandates local participation in the production and assembly of solar panels, batteries, and wind components, are exceptions. Their implementation often fails due to a lack of administrative capacity and a shortage of local suppliers capable of meeting Chinese quality and cost standards.
The ecological footprint of large-scale Chinese projects is ambivalent. While solar power plants are by definition low-emission, mega-hydropower projects cause significant environmental and social damage: forced relocations, destruction of ecosystems, alteration of hydrological systems, and cross-border conflicts over water resources. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, for example, triggered a years-long conflict with Egypt, which is dependent on the Nile and fears an existential threat to its water supply.
The extraction of raw materials for China's own energy transition is generating additional ecological burdens in Africa: Cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo often operate without adequate environmental regulations, contaminating water and soil with heavy metals. Lithium mining in Zimbabwe demands large amounts of water in already water-scarce regions. The irony that China's green energy transition in Africa is perpetuating brown extraction practices is increasingly being addressed by environmental groups.
The geopolitical dimension manifests itself in technological dependence and strategic vulnerability. African energy systems that rely on Chinese components, software, maintenance, and spare parts create long-term dependencies that are difficult to diversify. Standards and patents built into these systems can make future expansions or integrations with non-Chinese technology more expensive or even impossible. In the event of a conflict—for example, tensions over Taiwan or maritime territorial disputes in the South China Sea—China could theoretically disrupt supply chains or withdraw technical support, jeopardizing Africa's energy security.
The transparency and governance deficits are structural. China's non-conditionality principle—the promise not to demand political or economic reforms, as Western donors do—is often portrayed as an advantage by African governments. However, this stance also enables cooperation with authoritarian regimes without accountability, which encourages corruption, misappropriation of funds, and the perpetuation of extractive elites. In Zimbabwe, for example, lithium revenues primarily flow to the ruling ZANU-PF elite, while the population barely benefits.
Development paths and disruptive scenarios
The future development of the Africa Solar Belt will be determined by the interaction of technological, economic, geopolitical and climatic factors, which allow for several alternative scenarios.
The baseline scenario of gradual expansion projects a continuation of existing trends: China consolidates its position as the dominant provider of solar technology, financing, and construction in Africa, with installed capacity rising to 50 to 70 gigawatts by 2030. Africa continues to primarily import finished products, while local manufacturing capacity remains marginal and limited to assembly operations. Electrification rates are increasing slowly but fall short of Sustainable Development Goal 7.1.1 of universal electricity by 2030, with 400 to 500 million people still without access. China's access to raw materials is strengthening through further acquisitions in lithium, cobalt, and rare earths, and vertical integration from mine to battery to electric vehicle is becoming almost complete.
This scenario implies growing African trade deficits with China, a perpetuation of raw material extraction patterns without significant value added, and increasing technological lock-in effects. Geopolitically, it would strengthen Chinese influence in multilateral forums, as economically dependent African states support China's positions on Taiwan, human rights, or territorial disputes.
A diversification scenario would occur if Western actors invest substantially in Africa and create genuine alternatives to Chinese offerings. The EU Global Gateway Initiative pledged €300 billion for infrastructure in developing countries, with a focus on Africa. The US Power Africa Initiative and the Development Finance Corporation could be expanded under geopolitical pressure. If these promises were to materialize—historically, Western infrastructure commitments are often underfunded and bureaucratically delayed—Africa could choose between competing offers, negotiate better terms, and achieve technological diversification.
However, this would require Western bids to be price-competitive, which is difficult given higher labor and capital costs in Europe and North America, and to replicate the integrated finance-build-operate packages that constitute China's competitive advantage. Japan, South Korea, India, and Gulf states could also emerge as alternative partners, particularly in technology areas such as hydrogen or advanced battery systems.
An African industrialization scenario would emerge if African countries collectively and strategically coordinatedly insist on local value creation. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), operational since 2021, theoretically creates a single market of 1.3 billion people with a GDP of $3.4 trillion. If this market were truly integrated, it could enable economies of scale that would make local solar panel manufacturing, battery production, and component manufacturing viable.
Nigeria is already demonstrating that local solar manufacturing can be four percent cheaper than Chinese imports when tariffs and local raw materials are used. Ethiopia's low industrial electricity costs (2.7 US cents per kilowatt-hour) offer competitive advantages for energy-intensive production stages such as wafer manufacturing. South Africa's 300-megawatt Seraphim plant demonstrates technical feasibility. If African countries were to impose export restrictions on unprocessed critical minerals, as Zimbabwe did for raw lithium in 2022, they could force China to process them locally.
However, realizing this scenario requires massive investments in technical education, industrial infrastructure, and research, as well as overcoming fragmented national policies in favor of regional coordination. Historically, African integration initiatives have largely disappointed, with existing elites benefiting from the status quo of raw material exports without the risks of industrial transformation.
A crisis scenario could be triggered by several disruptions: A global recession or a Chinese financial crisis would drastically reduce credit flows to Africa. An escalation of the Taiwan conflict or tensions in the South China Sea could lead to Western sanctions against Chinese technology exports, which would destabilize African energy systems. Climate change-related extreme events—accelerated droughts, floods, or cyclones—could make large-scale projects unprofitable and trigger debt crises. A technological disruption, such as breakthroughs in perovskite solar cells, which can be produced decentrally and with low capital investment, could undermine Chinese dominance and enable African self-sufficiency.
A clash of systems scenario would occur if the Global South, led by China, establishes an alternative development model that explicitly rejects Western norms on governance, transparency, and human rights. China's rhetoric of a multipolar system, the Global Development Initiative, and the Belt and Road Initiative as a counter-model to Western neoliberalism is gaining traction in Africa, particularly in light of historical exploitation through colonialism and IMF structural adjustment programs. If this divide were to deepen, parallel technology standards, financing systems, and trade blocs could emerge, significantly complicating global cooperation on climate protection and development.
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Options for a more sustainable energy partnership
The analysis of the Africa Solar Belt reveals the need for substantial course corrections on all sides in order to realize the positive potential and minimize the identified risks.
African governments and the African Union need a coordinated negotiating strategy. The creation of a joint negotiating platform under the umbrella of the AU, analogous to the Paris Club of creditors, would pool negotiating power and prevent race-to-the-bottom dynamics in which countries accept less favorable terms for fear of losing investments to neighboring countries. Standardized minimum requirements for loan agreements – transparency clauses, debt sustainability assessments, local content quotas, environmental and social standards – should be collectively enforced.
The implementation and enforcement of robust local content policies is crucial. Nigeria's Electricity Act 2023 offers a model that deserves expansion: regulations for local participation in the manufacturing, installation, maintenance, and operation of solar systems, combined with investments in technical training and research. The establishment of regional centers of excellence for photovoltaic technology, battery systems, and grid integration could accelerate knowledge transfer and reduce dependence on external experts.
For China, this creates reputational and long-term economic incentives for policy changes. Improving the transparency of loan agreements, participating in multilateral debt relief initiatives under comparable conditions to traditional donors, and integrating robust environmental and social standards into all projects would defuse criticism and enable more sustainable partnerships. The already announced shift toward small and beautiful projects should be intensified and supplemented by genuine technology transfer: joint ventures with local companies that not only assemble but also design and innovate, research collaborations, and the gradual localization of production stages.
China could significantly increase its soft power by proactively contributing to solving Africa's electrification gap, not primarily through large-scale projects for urban centers and industries, but through scalable off-grid solutions for the 450 million rural Africans without access to electricity. The announced 100 million yuan for 50,000 households in the Africa Solar Belt is effectively symbolic, given a deficit of 600 million people. A tenfold increase in this program to 1 billion yuan would reach 500,000 households, still only 0.3 percent of those affected, but would have minimal financial impact on China and maximum impact on local quality of life and China's image.
For Western actors and multilateral institutions, the findings imply the need to offer credible alternatives, not just rhetorical ones. The EU Global Gateway and the US Build Back Better World initiative must move from announcements to implemented projects, with competitive terms and expedited approval processes. Integrating development finance with trade access—such as expanded everything-but-arms preferences for manufactured green technology products from Africa—would promote African industrialization.
Trilateral cooperation formats between China, Western actors, and Africa, as occasionally discussed, could pool expertise and resources: China would supply cost-effective hardware, Europe would provide standards and regulations, and Africa would provide markets and raw materials, all embedded in transparent multi-stakeholder governance structures. Pilot projects in this format could demonstrate that cooperation is possible despite geopolitical tensions and is more beneficial than zero-sum competition.
Strategic opportunities are opening up for investors and companies in niche segments: advanced battery technologies, grid integration software, green hydrogen, circular economy solutions for solar modules, specialized financing products, and insurance for renewable energies in frontier markets. The rapid growth of African solar markets—projected at 42 percent by 2025—signals attractive return potential for risk-tolerant players.
The fundamental challenge remains the transformation from an extractive to a generative model that translates African raw materials and solar resources into sustainable value creation, industrial development, and widespread prosperity, rather than creating new dependencies. The Africa Solar Belt can be a catalyst for this transformation if all stakeholders recognize the need for genuine partnership beyond short-term special interests. Otherwise, it risks perpetuating historical patterns of neo-colonial extraction disguised as green technology, with long-term destabilizing consequences for Africa, China, and the global climate regime.
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