Ambiguous by Design
China’s Global Security Initiative and Africa’s Security Dilemma
When Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled the Global Security Initiative (GSI) in April 2022 at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2022, African capitals received it with cautious interest. The GSI represents one of several Chinese-led initiatives designed to influence international governance frameworks in ways that align with China’s aspirations for greater global standing. Built on the vision of “common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security,” the GSI arrived on the African continent with familiar promises: non-interference, mutual respect, and cooperative security solutions tailored to local contexts.
For a region long weary of Western-imposed security frameworks that often prioritized external interests over African stability, the GSI’s rhetoric resonated. However, three years and nine months into its implementation, the initiative reveals a fundamental ambiguity that African leaders must navigate carefully. A troubling pattern emerges: beneath its anti-hegemonic rhetoric lies a framework so deliberately ambiguous that it risks becoming precisely what it claims to oppose—another external power shaping African security on its own terms.
The GSI’s appeal to Africa is understandable. The initiative explicitly rejects what Beijing calls a “Cold War mentality” and military alliances, instead emphasizing dialogue, mediation, and respect for territorial integrity. For African nations facing complex security challenges—from terrorism in the Sahel to maritime piracy in the Gulf of Guinea—China positions itself as an alternative partner unburdened by colonial history. Unlike Western security assistance, which often comes bundled with governance conditions and human rights scrutiny, China’s approach appears refreshingly pragmatic. This resonates particularly in regions where Western interventions, from Libya to Somalia, have left behind power vacuums and prolonged instability.
However, the GSI’s most significant characteristic is also its greatest liability: its deliberate vagueness. Despite Xi Jinping’s declaration at the Ninth FOCAC in September 2024 that the 2025-2027 Action Plan represents “an example of early GSI implementation,” accompanied by eight high-level China-Africa military exchanges and training for 90 early-career officers from 40 African countries at the PLA Army Command College in Nanjing, the GSI remains fundamentally ambiguous for African states. While these activities demonstrate increased operational tempo, they fail to resolve the GSI’s core definitional vagueness—the initiative still lacks clear implementation mechanisms, accountability structures, or frameworks addressing critical concerns about data sovereignty, surveillance technology governance, and whether security cooperation protects Chinese economic interests or addresses root causes of African instability.
This ambiguity is not accidental; it provides Beijing with maximum flexibility to pursue interests that may not always align with African security needs, while creating dependencies through police training, military cooperation agreements, and technology exports without corresponding mechanisms for African agency or oversight. Consider the practical applications thus far. China has expanded its security footprint across Africa through police training programs, surveillance technology exports, and military cooperation agreements, all ostensibly under the GSI umbrella. Chinese-supplied facial recognition systems and smart city infrastructure now operate in numerous African capitals, marketed as tools for public safety. Yet these technologies raise profound questions about data sovereignty and surveillance that the GSI framework does not adequately address.
The major concern is who controls the data collected by Chinese-built systems, how it is used, and what safeguards exist against abuse. The 2018 allegation that China spied on the African Union (AU) headquarters between 2012 and 2017—though later dismissed—remains a concern. The headquarters, a building funded and built by China, highlights that these are not hypothetical issues—they are central to lasting security in an era where information is power. Moreover, the GSI’s emphasis on non-interference and sovereignty, while appealing, can inadvertently shield authoritarian practices. Several African governments facing domestic unrest have found in China a willing security partner that asks few questions about how assistance is used. Military equipment, cyber surveillance tools, and crowd-control technologies transferred under security cooperation frameworks have, in some instances, been deployed against peaceful protesters and political opposition, although this is not exclusive to China. The GSI’s refusal to engage with governance questions means it lacks mechanisms to prevent security cooperation from becoming a tool of repression rather than genuine stability.
The initiative’s impact on existing African security architecture presents another concern. The African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the African Peace and Security Architecture represent home-grown frameworks developed through years of continental dialogue. The GSI risks creating parallel structures that could undermine these institutions or divide African nations between competing security paradigms. Already, differences are emerging between African states more aligned with Chinese approaches and those maintaining stronger ties to Western security partners, potentially fracturing continental unity on security matters.
Yet dismissing the GSI entirely would be short-sighted. China brings genuine capabilities to the table: rapid infrastructure development for security installations, willingness to engage in regions others avoid, and substantial financial resources unconstrained by democratic oversight or public opinion in Beijing. For some African security challenges, particularly maritime security and counter-piracy, Chinese contributions have been valuable and relatively uncontroversial. The question is not whether to engage with the GSI, but how to do so strategically. African nations need to approach the GSI with clear-eyed pragmatism. This means insisting on transparency in security agreements, maintaining control over critical data and infrastructure, and ensuring that security cooperation complements rather than supplants continental institutions.
It requires building sufficient technical expertise to negotiate as equals rather than simply accepting Chinese proposals wholesale. Most importantly, it demands that African leaders distinguish between security assistance that addresses root causes of instability like poverty, inequality, and weak institutions—and security cooperation that merely manages symptoms while potentially creating new dependencies. The ambiguity of China’s GSI is both its defining feature and its fundamental challenge for Africa. Without greater clarity, accountability, and alignment with African-led security frameworks, the GSI risks becoming another external imposition dressed in the language of partnership. Africa’s quest for lasting security requires partners, certainly—but partners who empower rather than entrap, who build capacity rather than dependency, and who respect not just sovereignty in principle but African agency in practice.