China’s BRI in Africa: Exploring Development Through Discourses and Policy Practices

In the mid-1990s, the Swiss sociologist Gilbert Rist referred to the concept of development as a “Western myth and belief” and a world religion comparable to the “Point IV” of the Marshall Plan proposed to Europe by President Truman who inaugurated the era of development in international relations. Rist compared the emergence of that concept to a new form of political colonisation (Rist, 1996). Political colonisation was brought about by circulating global “cultural knowledge”, which involved spreading domestic and international ideas, foreign policy preferences, and national cultural-economic choices from one region or international institution to others to realise or secure specific political and cultural-economic interests. Comparable to such a global policy process, the debates surrounding China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since 2013 have prompted discussions about the initiative’s motives, nature, scope, and impact in developing countries. These debates signify a cultural-economic competition among global players involving describing, monitoring, evaluating, legitimising, criticising, and discussing China’s BRI program and associated policy practices in “global South” regions, including Africa. Notably, there has been a significant lack of inclusion of African perspectives in these global BRI policy discourses relating to development policies of the continent. These policies have been shaped by competing Chinese and Western ideas, tied to institutional and private financial capacities, cultural-economic practices, and their domestic outcomes in African countries. The perspective of this book underscores the need for a foreign-domestic policy approach to bring back African governments’ agency and capacity and analyse the cultural-economic process of China’s BRI policies in Africa.