Chinese economic engagement in Africa and West African maritime ports

A growing body of scholarship has explored China's expanding role in Africa, particularly through frameworks such as the Belt and Road Initiative and South-South cooperation. Despite important advances in recent decades, key gaps remain in our understanding of Chinese economic engagement in Africa, particularly regarding the diversity of Chinese actors, the strategic role of infrastructure such as maritime ports, and the collaborative dimensions of external engagement. As African policymakers navigate a rapidly evolving landscape of foreign investment, there remains a pressing need to better understand how varieties of Chinese economic engagement intersect with African agency and broader global dynamics. This dissertation aims to address these gaps by examining the varieties, structures, and consequences of Chinese economic engagement in Africa, with a particular focus on West African maritime ports. It integrates insights from international relations theory, political economy, and development studies to offer a more nuanced understanding of how different forms of Chinese capital operate, how engagement can be systematically measured, and how African, Chinese, and European actors increasingly interact in shared infrastructure projects. Maritime ports, which serve as strategic gateways for trade, economic development, and geopolitical influence, provide a critical empirical lens for these questions. This dissertation asks five core questions. First, how has the concept of guanxi influenced the emergence of new relational paradigms in international relations? Second, how can Chinese economic engagement across African states be systematically tracked and compared over time? Third, what are the different varieties of Chinese capital operating in Africa, and how can they be meaningfully categorized? Fourth, why is West Africa home to the highest concentration of Chinese port projects on the continent, and what forms does Chinese engagement take in these ports? Fifth, how and why are Chinese and European firms collaborating in West African maritime infrastructure, and what does this reveal about evolving global development models? Chapter 1 examines the growing relevance of guanxi in global politics, demonstrating its rise as an important relational framework within international relations theory. Using Google Ngram trends, JSTOR bibliometric analysis, and the Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, it shows how guanxi has entered mainstream scholarly discourse and argues that relational frameworks offer important alternatives to Western-centric models of diplomacy. Chapter 2 introduces the China–Africa Engagement Index (CAEI), a novel metric for tracking and comparing Chinese economic engagement across African states from 2003 to 2022. Drawing on data from the China Africa Research Initiative, it presents multiple index variants to capture the diversity of engagement patterns and identifies both familiar and underappreciated cases of Chinese influence. Chapter 3 develops a typology of Chinese capital in Africa, distinguishing between top-down and bottom-up forms of engagement through an in-depth case study of Ghana. It shows that while state-owned enterprises dominate large infrastructure sectors, private firms and SMEs play major roles in competitive industries, highlighting tensions within decentralized Chinese engagement and the importance of African agency. Chapter 4 investigates Chinese firm activity across 33 West African port projects, highlighting patterns of construction, financing, ownership, and operations. While construction dominates engagement, the chapter emphasizes that operational control represents the greatest source of long-term leverage, with important implications for both economic development and security. Chapter 5 challenges the dominant competition narrative by illustrating how Chinese and European firms increasingly collaborate in port development, introducing the Construction-Management Synergy Model. Through case studies of Tema, Lekki, and Kribi ports, it shows how stakeholders combine comp ementary strengths of construction and operational management, suggesting that pragmatic collaboration is reshaping West African maritime infrastructure. Together, these studies provide a comprehensive and multifaceted account of Chinese economic engagement in Africa and West African maritime infrastructure, highlighting the evolving interplay between economic strategy, political relations, and development outcomes.