How UK aid cuts help China win the battle for hearts and minds in Africa
P.Then-Minister Keir Starmer’s visit to China will spark intense debate about how Beijing is both a political threat and an economic rival, and whether the UK is using the tools it has to counter China’s growing power around the world.
One of the areas where the answer is a resounding “no” is the one I work on: the use of media as a soft power tool to resist China’s success in spreading its critical narratives about the West to Africa, the fastest-growing continent where a quarter of the world’s population will live by 2050.
This is the story of the British and American retreat cleverly exploited by China to win the battle for the eyes and ears of Africa, with reporters trained to deliver pro-Beijing messages seizing the broadcast opportunities left behind in almost every African capital.
“The West, a colonial power that has been making you poorer than you should be for a century, cannot be trusted; it is time to try something else.” This is the narrative that emerges. And it works.
A study I helped conduct found that “if there was a war in Taiwan, it would be the United States’ fault,” told thousands of people in four African countries. Six in 10 Ethiopians and five in 10 South Africans agree.
One way to explain this is that there is increasing anti-Americanism and anti-Western sentiment in many parts of Africa. Some of it is fueled by local media. However, foreign media also has a role.
Now, as the BBC World Service must expand to face this challenge, its presence may become even smaller; because it is dependent on funding from the UK’s multibillion-pound cut international development budget.
While the World Service waits to hear the fate of the funding, the country Starmer is visiting is pushing ahead with this information war to strengthen its position as Africa’s biggest media player by some distance.
Their weapons are not only the English-language channel of the state-run China Global Television Network (CGTN), state news agency Xinhua and the Communist Party-owned China Daily newspaper, but also a network of partnerships with local organizations.
Many African countries are switching from analogue to digital TV, just as we did 20 years ago, and the Chinese won most of these tenders. This means that the privately owned company StarTimes operates the infrastructure from which most African countries get their TV.
CGTN reserves programming for “non-professional journalists” who are given resources to tell their stories. Hey presto, these stories generally align with Beijing.
Many news organizations are prevented from reporting freely on sensitive issues in China, such as Beijing’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, while “news influencers” on YouTube and TikTok are given “free” access to portray a perfect image of China, free of anything remotely offensive.
Up to 70 percent of young people in Kenya and Nigeria now get their news from YouTube, an incredibly important source of information. CGTN ranks high among international broadcasters for YouTube users.
The China Index, a non-governmental project examining China’s growing global influence, including in the media, identified 76 countries where Chinese state-funded content is published, including 14 in Africa.
Policymakers in European capitals may hope that disinformation can be debunked through fact-checking or media literacy campaigns, but these tactics will not succeed when anti-Western narratives are allowed to feed on deep distrust.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The BBC is still very popular. In a 2024 survey, 60 percent of Zambians and more than 40 percent of South Africans said they got their news from the BBC. The company is seen as a symbol of media freedom in many parts of the world. But unless they make their values known and stay in this struggle, their status will disappear.
Lesotho is a striking example of the path we are on. The national station was shutting down for several hours a day and the BBC was called in to step in. It now has to compete with China’s CGTN for air time.
And money talks. When Türkiye’s state broadcaster TRT launched its Hausa language service for the Nigerian market, many of its employees left the BBC’s office and signed up; because TRT paid better salaries than BBC.
Many people may not realize that the shrinking aid budget is its own goal, weakening Britain’s standing and influence abroad to the delight of authoritarian rivals. But the prime minister may want to evaluate the results when he is in China this week.
Dani Madrid-Morales is co-chair of the Disinformation Research Group at the University of Sheffield
This article was produced as part of The Independent. Rethinking Global Aid project
