Africa Thematic 18 September 2026

The primary domains of the US-China contest in Africa

Jeremy Stevens | Simon Freemantle

The rivalry between the US and China in Africa is usually described as a competition for resources, markets, and influence. That description is not wrong, but it is too myopic. The contest is not simply about who builds more railways or mines more cobalt. It is about who defines the operating system through which the continent develops: the physical infrastructure that moves goods, the energy systems that power industry, the digital architecture that manages data, the financial plumbing that clears trade, and the minerals that underpin the global energy transition.
In each layer, a single question recurs: can African governments secure the infrastructure they need without ceding control of the systems that govern it?
The previous paper in this series argued that African agency in the US-China rivalry is real but constrained. The continent sits at the intersection of the defining geopolitical competition of our era, with strategic minerals, young populations, and growing markets that both Washington and Beijing covet. Yet most African states lack the institutional capacity to convert that apparent leverage into durable sovereignty and/or structural transformation. This paper extends the analysis to the primary domains upon which the contest is playing out: physical infrastructure, critical minerals, renewable energy, the digital stack, and financial architecture.
In this sense, we argue that the US-China competition is not a contest for “Africa”. Instead, it is a set of linked contests for specific assets, corridors, and markets. China and the US are competing across infrastructure, minerals, clean energy, digital systems, and finance. That said, this contest does not always take place in the same places and/or with the same tools.
This also means that no country sits at the centre of every contest, and so a continent-wide policy response will miss where bargaining power actually lies. Mineral leverage is concentrated in DRC, Zambia and Guinea; corridor competition in Angola, Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique; digital and financial competition in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.
China retains the stronger overall position because it has built an ecosystem, rather than having simply financed projects. Its advantage is the ability to combine contractors, equipment, trade, mine ownership and offtake, infrastructure finance, operational capability and, increasingly, RMB settlement. The practical consequence is a growing installed base across which technical standards, maintenance contracts and commercial relationships reinforce one another. The central issue therefore has less to do with whom commits the most capital than it does with whom controls the infrastructure, data, logistics and supply chains after the assets are built.
Infrastructure competition has shifted from sovereign lending towards commercial control of strategic assets. Chinese engagement is becoming more selective, commercially oriented, and structured around equity, PPPs, operations and maintenance, and cash-generating assets in energy, telecoms, logistics and minerals. This can reduce the visible sovereign-debt burden, but it may deepen long-term dependence where concession terms, revenue rights, procurement standards and refinancing options are weakly negotiated. The US and its partners offer a narrower but potentially valuable alternative through strategic corridors, development finance and risk mitigation; however, their constraint is execution at sufficient scale.
Critical minerals offer Africa its clearest source of leverage, but only if governments move from extraction to selective processing. China's advantage again rests on vertically integrated control of mine investment, infrastructure, offtake, and downstream refining. US-backed initiatives such as the Lobito Corridor improve route diversification but do not in themselves create processing capability and/or assured demand for African value-added output. The realistic opportunity is not for every resource country to build a complete battery supply chain. Rather, it is to develop viable processing clusters linked to reliable power, transport, regional markets and enforceable offtake and local-content commitments.
In clean energy and digital infrastructure, the enduring contest is over standards and operational control rather than upfront finance alone. China can supply competitively priced equipment at scale and increasingly bundle it with construction, finance and long-term service arrangements. In power, the strategic layers are inverters, storage, grid-control software, smart meters and operations and maintenance. In digital systems, Chinese firms are deeply embedded in the physical network and device layers, while US firms retain structural influence in cloud, operating systems and platforms.
RMB use is expanding as part of China's commercial infrastructure, but it remains a complement to the dollar. The strategic objective for African policymakers should, therefore, be to deepen local-currency markets, hedging instruments and regional payment systems, rather than substitute yuan dependence for dollar dependence.
African agency will be determined by institutional capacity and must be tailored to country type. Mineral-processing candidates need to bargain for power, processing and offtake flexibility; corridor states for open access, tariff oversight and route diversity; digital hubs for interoperability, cyber audits and enforceable data governance; financial centres for local-currency liquidity and FX-risk management; and clean-energy leaders for supplier diversification and control over high-stickiness software and storage layers. The objective is not to choose between China and the US, but to preserve the ability to negotiate with multiple partners from a position of informed strength.
The next five years will be decisive. China's equipment overcapacity, expanding commercial footprint and RMB push create an opportunity for African governments to secure cheaper infrastructure, technology and finance. But the same conditions can lock in dependence if procurement, regulation and technical capacity do not keep pace. The countries that use competition to secure interoperable systems, transparent contracts, local capability and genuine exit options will gain durable sovereignty; those that treat rivalry as a source of easy finance will risk becoming captive to the systems built around them.

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