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China’s belt and road initiative: linkages with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 in historical perspective

Abstract This paper examines the African interface of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), identifying synergies between it and Africa’s development agenda. Particularly assessed is its capacity to converge with the African Union’s Agenda 2063’s Aspirations 2, 4 and 5. The paper argues that the BRI appears to have developmental implications for Africa in terms of industrialisation and infrastructure rolling out and by extension boosting intra-continental trade, the African Peace and Security Architecture and intra-continental people-to-people exchange. The paper concludes with an empirical case for caution; indicating that for beneficiation levels to grow, a concerted effort on the part of both Africa and China is needed in order to synchronise infrastructure with socio-economic/demographic realities (rather than perceiving it as only an engineering problem), so that it is not only outward as was seen with colonial-era railways which were only coastally directed due to the extractive nature of colonial economies, resulting in infrastructural debilitation after independence.