The canary in the gold mine: How China's play for Côte d'Ivoire signals the West is losing Africa
‘True friends always feel close to each other, no matter the distance between them,’ recited Xi Jinping at last year’s Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.
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For no country is this truer than the People’s Republic of China, which has mastered the art of projecting influence across the globe. From ports in Australia to ‘super-embassies’ in London, Beijing has embedded itself with quiet but deliberate intent.
It has utilised this to great effect in Africa — The Mother Continent. Since the early 2000s, China has spent over $155 billion in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Developing countries have often been vulnerable to such financing. Unlike Western lenders, Chinese finance comes with few questions asked, and with plenty of highly visible perks — football stadiums, new parliaments, gleaming transport hubs.
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As former Africa Minister Sir James Duddridge told me, we cannot afford to rely on the ‘naïve’ assumption that access to London’s capital markets will outcompete Beijing’s offer of easy money.
Now China has its eyes on an African jewel. Cote d'Ivoire.
It is not surprising. Since emerging from civil conflict in 2011, Cote d'Ivoire has averaged around 7% annual GDP growth. The IMF projects 6.3% growth in 2025, with inflation hovering near 3%. For context, the country’s GDP per capita is now the second-highest in West Africa, behind only Cape Verde.
But that very success has drawn new attention. Chinese firms — many of them state-owned — are now pouring into Ivory Coast’s mining sector.
In 2024 alone, Zijin Mining acquired a 10% stake in the Koné gold project and opened talks to buy the Tongon gold mine for $500 million. Zijin is no small operator, with newly announced plans for a $3.2 billion IPO (Initial Public Offering).
Other Chinese firms, too, have been making inroads. Only recently were plans announced for China's Ganfeng, the world’s third largest lithium exporter, to ship their lithium to Mali via Abidjan — Cote d'Ivoire’s business capital. It is a strategic land-grab for West Africa’s mineral future.
Cote d'Ivoire is a canary in a coal mine. If this relatively metropolitan country — closer to Brussels than Beijing — with a thriving business sector can risk falling under China’s spell, then so can the rest of the continent.
The West risks being left behind.
This matters. Cote d'Ivoire, home to the African Development Bank, has been central to Europe’s engagement with the continent’s Francophonie countries — many of whom are succumbing to Russian and Chinese influence.
The choice for the West is stark. Either we remain on the sidelines, watching as strategic partners are won over by Beijing’s chequebook diplomacy, or we engage with renewed seriousness. That means smarter investment, faster financing, and a willingness to compete not only on values but on practical delivery.
Because in Africa today, influence is not earned by lectures. It is earned by building — and right now, China is building faster.
Thomas Munson is a freelance journalist who has written for publications such as The Spectator, The Critic and LBC News. He is a former aide to two UK Secretaries of State.