Are China and Russia on a Collision Course in Africa?

The sun was just coming up on March 19, 2023, as gunmen invaded the Chimbolo gold mine in the Central African Republic and opened fire on the Chinese employees residing there. The site’s security guards were easily overpowered, and nine Chinese, part of a contingent that had launched the site only days earlier, were killed.

Rebel groups quickly blamed the assault on Russian Wagner Group operatives, who the rebels claimed were intent on scaring the Chinese. According to this account, the Russians were jealous of China’s long-standing presence in the country and wanted to deter Beijing so that Moscow could enlarge its own operations in the Central African mining sector.

No evidence was provided for these assertions, and the identities of the perpetrators of the attack remain unclear two years later. Yet the incident raises questions over the potential clash between growing Russian and Chinese influence in sub-Saharan Africa.

On the most basic level, the two countries have fundamentally different objectives on the continent. Whereas China has sought stability to ensure its considerable investments can come to fruition, Russian involvement seems to be motivated by and thrive in insecurity and instability. This could put them on an unintended collision course.

China’s presence is much larger than Russia’s, with China-Africa trade reaching $295 billion in 2024—making it the continent’s biggest single trading partner. This compares to just $24.5 billion for Russia.

China has been involved in Africa for decades, while Russia’s resurgence on the continent is much more recent, dating to the 2010s.

“Russia tends to focus on building political alliances, selling weapons, and using private military contractors, like the Wagner Group, to provide security,” said Justus Nam, an independent research consultant focusing on China-Africa relations. “On the other hand, China has centered its strategy on long-term economic ties.”

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is at the center of this strategy. The BRI is a foreign economic policy and investment program, which now includes all but two African countries. The extent of the initiative is underscored by the fact that at least 46 African ports have been built or financed or are currently operated by Chinese state-owned shipping companies.

Moscow, by contrast, has provided defense assistance to a number of countries where armed groups are widespread and has often helped fledgling or failing presidents to remain in office, where they otherwise might have been overthrown by militias or coups.

It is not a coincidence that Mali, CAR, and Sudan, all of which are currently experiencing widespread insecurity and fragility, are some of the major hot spots of Russian influence on the continent.

While Russian and Chinese interests have often diverged, they have frequently been mutually beneficial because of their shared desire to counter Western influence.

China has likely been pleased by the widespread use of pro-Russian propaganda to encourage states with already anti-French and anti-Western beliefs to boot out French and U.S. troops and bases.

“China is generally happy to use Russia’s behavior opportunistically if it counters U.S. influence,” said William Matthews, a senior research fellow for China and the world at Chatham House. “They are typically not working together but keeping out of each other’s way.”

In November 2024, two countries that had increasingly showed signs of becoming closer to Russia—Chad and Senegal—asked France to withdraw its troops and bases, followed quickly by Cote d’Ivoire in December 2024, bringing to six the number of countries in West Africa that had made such requests in the past five years.

Despite these convergences of interests, areas of competition and contention are likely to emerge in the next decade.

China and Russia are now the two largest arms suppliers to sub-Saharan Africa. Russia provides 21 percent of arms imports, marginally ahead of China, which brings in 18 percent. Western sanctions against Russia in recent years have made it more difficult for Moscow to sell weapons to the continent and have created an opportunity for China in this market.

“Russia dominated this sector before, but now China is moving into it as well, creating the scope for heightened competition between the two countries,” said Chris Alden, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Meanwhile, battles for access to crucial minerals could also become problematic. China controls around 30 percent of African copper and 50 percent of cobalt production, giving it significant control over global supply chains, which it will want to protect.

This determination to protect its access to resources has been underscored in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where conflict has reignited in recent months between Rwandan-backed M23 rebels and the Congolese state.

Chinese companies own the majority of cobalt, uranium, and copper mines in eastern Congo, and China has provided drones and weapons to the Congolese government and neighboring Uganda to fight the insurgent rebels. Beijing has even urged Kigali to end its support to M23, most likely because it wants to restore stability around its mines in eastern Congo.

This Chinese preference for subtle influence and maintaining stability in areas of investment to ensure that it gets good returns could gradually come into conflict with Russia’s efforts to sow and encourage violence and division. Without instability, Russia’s model of exchanging security assistance for natural resources is likely to be ineffective.

“If African countries turn to Russia for security needs,” Nam said, “they might deprioritize China’s infrastructure investments in conflict-prone areas.”

This may not matter much when China and Russia do not look to build influence or investment in the same countries. Yet where their presence overlaps, as in the case of CAR and increasingly in Equatorial Guinea—where China has plans to build a naval base and Russia is also providing Wagner security assistance—this may pose some challenges.

This is not a battle Russia wants. Moscow is already struggling with its military quagmire in Ukraine, and it has relied heavily on China to help it circumvent Western sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Given China’s importance to Vladimir Putin’s political survival, Beijing holds most of the cards in this diplomatic dance: Moscow would almost certainly have to back down if China demanded it.

But influence and investment in sub-Saharan Africa are vital to Russia, both as a means of ensuring access to crucial minerals and as a buffer to Western sanctions. It is therefore unlikely to withdraw its operations on the continent unless it is forced to.

Equally, although it would likely pose less of an existential risk to China, Beijing would also much rather avoid any confrontation with Russia.

China currently has no interest in dealing with security issues in the vicinity of its African investments. But the more bullish Russia is on the continent, the more likely it is that security challenges will spill over borders and pose problems for China’s investments and influence in these countries.

More than 10,000 Chinese firms now operate in Africa, and the value of Chinese business there since 2005 has risen to more than $2 trillion.

“The stability question is more important to China in the long term,” Alden said. “The question will then be, how does China stop Russian actions from damaging Chinese interests?”

A notable flashpoint could be Ivory Coast, which finds itself in an increasingly unstable neighborhood where Russian influence is prevalent. Russia is eager to build a presence in Ivory Coast and appears to have helped countries in the Sahel run disinformation campaigns in Ivory Coast in recent months.

At the moment, Ivory Coast remains relatively stable, though elections are due this year with the potential for greater unrest. China, which is Ivory Coast’s most significant trading partner, with trade more than doubling between 2017 and 2022, would likely be extremely frustrated if Russia were to create disruption there that undermined its economic ties.

Not only is there a security challenge, but if countries partnering with Russia are increasingly facing civil unrest and conflict, they are also unlikely to be able to pay back Chinese infrastructure loans, posing another problem for China.

Chinese loans account for around 12 percent of African public and private debts, and some countries are in a particularly bad way. For instance, by 2021, Equatorial Guinea’s debt to China was 49.7 percent of GDP, and in 2019, Djibouti’s had reached 71 percent and Zambia’s 65.8 percent.

Then, there is the added conundrum of what happens when Russian havoc antagonizes the West.

On the one hand, the chaos created by Russia distracts the West from countering Chinese activities and expansion because it is too concerned by Moscow’s more belligerent acts.

Yet there is also a possibility that while Chinese influence went relatively unimpeded prior to Russian involvement, the West will now fight harder to maintain a presence on the continent to counter Russia, in turn frustrating China’s ambitions or competing directly for resources.

This is perhaps most notable in the advent of the Lobito Corridor, an 800-mile railway that will link Congo’s mining regions to Zambia and the Angolan port of Lobito, on the Atlantic Ocean. The railway line, for which the first feasibility studies were completed in September 2024, is funded by the United States and the European Union and is a direct counter to the BRI.

Then-President Joe Biden visited Angola in December to promote this project and demonstrate U.S. commitment to the continent, while Angolan President João Lourenço has described the United States as the ideal partner to reequip Angola’s military.

None of this was good news for China, a long-standing Angolan ally, which has countered aggressively with new investments in Angola, including an announcement that Beijing will construct Angola’s first highway. The project will link southern and northern Angola and is due to begin construction this year.

For China, African nations are indispensable; they provide it with considerable trade and wealth as well as access to strategic ports. Yet despite all the destabilization that Russia potentially brings, Moscow’s involvement is also beneficial because of the way it further undermines Western influence in the region.

In such circumstances, over the longer term, China may opt to adapt so that it can have its cake and eat it too. Beijing may start to mimic Russia’s use of mercenaries and develop its own private security sector to reduce its reliance on stability.

By deploying its own mercenaries, it could better defend its operations abroad, enabling it to continue its investments in spite of Russian-inspired chaos while also keeping Moscow involved on the continent as a counter to the West.