China and the geopolitics of language in Africa

Intent on maintaining a unifying tone, United States President Joe Biden’s virtual Summit for Democracy on 9-10 December avoided direct finger pointing at particular transgressors, including China. One of the many issues that necessarily remained under the radar, despite the implications for democracy, was China’s assertive use of knowledge diplomacy, and specifically its language, to politically engage Africa’s growing youth population.

Among the more than 100 invitees to the summit were 17 African countries. China was noticeably absent from the list. The agenda centred on three issues: defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption and promoting human rights, all problems plaguing many African states.

Unlike the G7 meeting last June where China’s involvement in Africa was directly addressed, here it lurked silently in the background. Amidst the assurances of participating African leaders to work toward the summit’s democratic goals, left unsaid were China’s efforts to dominate the continent, not just economically, as widely feared, but culturally.

Knowledge diplomacy

As China strengthens its political foothold by reshaping the African economy, it is collaterally investing in education and language programmes as a form of knowledge diplomacy.

Though seemingly benign, these programmes are spreading China’s political views among Africa’s rapidly increasing number of young people and potentially pivoting them away from the United States and Europe.

About 60% of Africa’s 1.3 billion people are now under the age of 25, with a median age of 19.7 years. By 2050, Africa is predicted to have the world’s largest workforce. The triennial Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, held in Senegal’s capital Dakar just a week before the summit, put a spotlight on how China is cashing in on this demographic dividend.

For the Chinese government, language programmes win over the young through education, training and employability. For Chinese investors, language skills reduce the transactional costs of doing business throughout Africa.

The Dakar meeting, with representatives from 53 African countries, concluded with a 2022-24 Action Plan including a long list of joint education and other commitments essential to Africa’s economy. Some were directly related to language and employment.

China agreed to build or upgrade 10 schools, to provide training in African languages for Chinese professionals to work in Africa, to continue supporting Chinese language programmes on the continent and to encourage Chinese companies in Africa to offer at least 800,000 local jobs. It also welcomed the inclusion of Chinese into the national curriculum of African countries.

The list itself seems unremarkable. Yet in reporting on the forum, China Daily, owned by the Chinese Communist Party, sent an eye-opening message: “Sino-African cooperation brings tangible benefits to African people… in stark contrast to the ‘empty promises’ some Western countries have made to Africa.”

Fertile ground

With related interests in mind, China has internationalised its university programmes to attract fee-paying students from around the globe and also to keep its own students from studying abroad. Some now offer courses and entire programmes in English.

Africa is fertile ground for student recruitment. Higher education on the continent is grossly underfunded and facilities are overcrowded. China’s universities are relatively affordable as compared to those in the West and its leading institutions place favourably in international rankings. Two are within the top 25. Only three African universities fall in the top 300.

The student outflow to China is consequently higher than the inflow to Africa, immersing African youth deep into China’s political mindset. Between 2003 and 2018, the number of African students studying in China grew from under 1,800 to over 81,000. They accounted for 17% of China’s international students, surpassed only by Asia at 60% and outstripping Europe at 15% and the ‘Americas’ at 7%.

Confucius Institutes

China has spread its language and culture across Africa itself through Confucius Institutes on university campuses. Of the more than 500 institutes worldwide, 61 are in Africa. A multi-billion-dollar enterprise, the programme typically provides a Chinese director, Chinese teachers, materials and start-up funds.

Confucius Institutes have proven politically controversial, especially in the United States. Restrictions on what teachers can discuss in class, critics claim, violate academic freedom, while the agreements lack transparency. Many universities, nevertheless, dismiss the accusations and praise the institutes for the language and cultural opportunities they offer.

In any case, they are thriving in Africa where they are powerful engines of knowledge diplomacy. Yet, as compared to their counterparts in the United States and Europe, African universities are more dependent on the Chinese resources provided and may have less bargaining power on governance and academic content.

For young Africans, Chinese language skills translate into jobs. The Confucius Institute at the University of Rwanda, partnering with Chongqing Normal University in China, opened in 2009 with 60 students to teach local business people basic Chinese for trade with China.

By 2018, its 10 teaching posts across the country had trained more than 4,000 students. Many of the graduates landed jobs with Chinese companies, Chinese-run projects or the Chinese embassy in Rwanda. Some had worked part time in Chinese restaurants and garment factories and on construction sites to defray the cost of their studies.

At Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the Confucius Institute is housed in a building opened in 2016 with a Chinese investment of US$2.5 million. It includes seven lecture halls, a multimedia hall, and an amphitheatre.

In a 2018 interview with the South China Morning Post, the institute’s Senegalese director suggested that the languages of former colonial powers were under threat. He predicted that “in 50 years, the lingua franca of Africa may well be Chinese”.

A wake-up call

The director’s statement, while speculative, should be a wake-up call to Western democracies, particularly France, the United Kingdom and the United States – all old hands at promoting political narratives through language and investment – as they shape their post-pandemic commitments in Africa.

Combined with the 2022-24 Action Plan, it’s an implicit warning that they ramp up their knowledge diplomacy or risk ceding not only their language, but also their shared values and political legitimacy, on the continent.

Infrastructure building and trade agreements, no doubt, gain favour with today’s state leaders, including autocratic ones who pay lip service to democracy. But it’s knowledge and ideals, conveyed through education, that shape the leaders of tomorrow.

France has moved ahead, most recently in the Africa-France Summit in October devoted solely to the younger generation, though not without neo-colonial reproach from Africa’s intellectual elite. That sobering experience should inform the United States and the United Kingdom on how they might refocus and strengthen their relationship with Africa, especially with its youth, while taking care not to reopen wounds from the past.

A Chinese proverb says that: “To learn a foreign language is to have one more window from which to look at the world.” But what you see depends on the particular lens that language offers. As China reaches into the hearts and minds of young Africans through its language and education programmes, it exposes them to a worldview that undermines democracy, now under siege on the continent and in the world. And that’s a worrisome picture. To what extent China’s repressive policies might put that view into sharper focus remains to be seen.

Rosemary Salomone is the Kenneth Wang Professor of Law at St John’s University School of Law in the United States. Her newly published book is The Rise of English: Global politics and the power of language, Oxford University Press, 2021.