Over the past decade or so, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has entrenched itself within Africa’s security affairs, deploying the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to form a nascent operational presence in Africa and around its waters. Africa now represents the PRC’s largest persistent military deployment outside of its periphery. Today, a desire to protect its overseas interests, coupled with global and regional instability and competition for global influence, is solidifying the PRC’s ambitions for a deeper military and security presence on the continent.
The PRC’s military presence in Africa grew out of deep economic and political ties the PRC developed across the African continent since the 1950s. As the growth of its portfolio of investments in Africa has accelerated since 2013 under the Belt and Road Initiative, PRC official documents and statements have suggested that Beijing perceives a growing need to protect its overseas interests with a military presence. Unsettling global events since 2020—the COVID-19 pandemic, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and rising instability in parts of Africa—have deepened the PRC’s security involvement across the continent and could lead to an even larger military presence in the future.
I recently completed the report The Military and Security Dimensions of the PRC’s Africa Presence: Changes in a Time of Global Shocks along with colleagues from CNA’s China Studies Program and Strategy and Policy Analysis Program. This study focused on the expanding functions and capabilities of the PLA base in Djibouti, the PRC’s leading of multilateral security forums, and efforts to grow the PRC sphere of influence using military diplomacy efforts on the continent. We also analyzed PRC government mandates such as the Global Security Initiative as a China-led security framework, with Africa as its main testing ground.
The Growth of China’s Military Presence in Africa
Africa has long played a prominent role in the PRC’s concept of its foreign policy. But only in the last two decades has Africa also become a testing ground for PRC military and security involvement outside China’s borders. Africa is home to many firsts for the PRC: The first PLA overseas military base in Djibouti, the first rotational deployment of PLA Navy anti-piracy ships, and one of Beijing’s first multilateral forums established outside of China’s periphery: the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. The PRC uses leadership in such forums to grow its outreach and deepen security cooperation and influence on the continent, such as offering professional military scholarships to African military leaders. This PRC military presence in Africa is a significant shift in its foreign policy after decades of criticizing the West as “expansionist military powers” for having overseas bases.
The PRC maintains roughly 4,100 PLA servicemembers in and around Africa: around 2,000 deployed to Djibouti, approximately 1,400 in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations in five nations on the continent, and around 700 sailors on ships around Africa’s coast. These numbers do not take into account the many PLA training forces, medical personnel, and defense attachés. Although the PRC has slightly fewer deployed servicemembers in Africa than are deployed by France (~5,500) or the United States (~5,000), Beijing’s Africa deployments are still quite significant for the PLA. The PLA Navy’s anti-piracy patrols off the Horn of Africa and the PLA Army’s UN peacekeeping missions represent the most important opportunities for PLA “real-world” operations outside of Asia.
The Djibouti base is a prime example of the PRC’s evolving military presence. In 2017, when the facility was opened in this tiny East African country, Beijing called it a “logistics facility.” Since then, the PLA has built up a major logistics hub with a dedicated naval pier capable of supporting the PLA Navy’s largest ships. The PLA trains troops from African nations at the base in combat-type exercises. And PLA Navy Marine Corps special operations forces capable of supporting combat missions have deployed to the base.
Global Shocks Affect China’s African Interests
The global shocks and changes that have occurred since 2020 are increasing instability across the African continent, heightening PRC concerns about their investments and interests—and possibly leading to increased military involvement on the continent. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences noted in 2020 that 84 percent of China’s Belt and Road Initiative investments are in medium- to high-political-risk countries, many of which are in Africa. Since 2020, military coups have heightened instability in Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Guinea, Chad, and Mali—all of which have sizable Chinese investments or Belt and Road infrastructure projects.
PRC officials have responded with statements confirming China’s resolve to grow closer ties militarily and its ambition to increase security cooperation. For example, in 2022, the PRC’s official Xinhua News Agency published a special report on the growing instability across Africa due to the COVID-19 pandemic and rising violence from terrorist and rebel groups across the continent. The report states that in response to the growing instability, the PRC will further deepen its involvement in Africa’s security affairs. Then, in February 2024, PRC Ministry of Defense spokesperson Senior Colonel Zhang Xiaogang stated that the PLA would “further enhance the quality and effectiveness of defense cooperation” between the militaries of Africa and the PRC.
Arms sales are one dramatic sign of increasing PRC military engagement in this time of global shocks. The PRC uses the sale of arms in conjunction with other types of military aid and assistance to complement its foreign policy initiatives, gain a profit from sales by its state-owned arms manufacturers, and build influence in Africa. Beijing filled a gap in arms sales from Russia to African nations when Moscow began hoarding weaponry for its war in Ukraine. As recently as 2022, Russia provided more than 40 percent of Africa’s weapons, and the PRC supplied less than 20 percent. But Russian arms sales to Africa collapsed from $315 million in 2022 to $102 million in 2023. Over the same period, the PRC’s arms sales to the African continent jumped by almost exactly the same amount, from $103 million to $306 million.
Beijing has yet to clearly indicate other steps it will take to increase military cooperation in Africa. One likely possibility is an additional base, possibly on the Atlantic Coast in the Gulf of Guinea, or further investment in developing military access agreements to civilian ports and other infrastructure. The PRC has also been seeking support for China’s Global Security Initiative, Xi Jinping’s signature initiative to bring about a PRC-led global security framework as a counter to the current Western-led security apparatus that Beijing views as dominated by the United States. The Global Security Initiative was one of the topics on the agenda when the Ministry of Defense last year invited 100 military officers from more than 40 African nations to visit China. Though Beijing has not released full details of what the initiative will actually do, at the Third China-Africa Peace and Security Forum last year, then-PRC State Councilor and Minister of National Defense General Li Shangfu said that through the Global Security Initiative, “China will enhance military cooperation with Africa in various fields including joint exercises, peacekeeping and escorting, military education as well as professional training.”
Whether Africa’s role as PLA’s testing ground for extra-regional operations is by default or design is unclear. However, as the PLA modernizes its force and develops more routine expeditionary capabilities, Africa may offer clues to what a future global PLA presence looks like. Beijing’s export of its authoritarian governance model, its deep and influential investments, and its downplaying of issues pertaining to human-rights and democracy all merit scrutiny. And in the coming years, the PRC’s military presence in Africa deserves a particularly close watch.
