Making sense of China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi’s 2026 tour of Africa

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OPINION

By Musanjufu Benjamin Kavubu

As the world was being sent back into barbarism by President Trump’s actions in Venezuela, China was being consistent on the diplomatic front on the African continent. For 36 consecutive years, the Chinese foreign ministry has made Africa its first stop of the year. It’s now a tradition in global diplomacy that the Chinese foreign minister makes his first formal appearance on the African continent as the year starts. In 2026, foreign minister Wang Yi was to visit Somalia, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Lesotho, but a few last-minute changes happened as we shall note in this write-up.

2026 marks a seven (7) decade diplomatic milestone in the relationship between China and Africa. Foreign Minister (FM) Wang Yi started his tour with a visit to Ethiopia, one of Beijing’s biggest brain Child on the continent, and also Africa’s political capital since it hosts the HQ of the African Union. Ethiopia is one of those African countries that value it’s relationship with China to an extent that it was the first African country to waive tariffs on Chinese electronic vehicles (EVs). Ethiopia, in the bid to modernize it’s economy, is the second biggest holder of Chinese debt behind Angola on the African continent.

For FM Wang to make Addis Ababa one of his main stop centres on the customary African tour was a geopolitical strategy. Over time, there has been a pragmatic mutual relationship between the two countries. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali and FM Wang Yi held discussions on infrastructure, energy and economic cooperation between the two countries.

The Ethiopian head of state stressed the need for cooperation on what he referred to as new energy and AI, given the global outlook on technology driving development at the moment. He referred to China as a historically trustworthy strategic partner to Ethiopia. FM Wang Yi said China expects Ethiopia to play a major role in regional and global affairs, especially now that it is a member of the BRICS.

While in Ethiopia, FM Wang Yi officially launched the 2026 China-Africa Year of People-to-People exchange, and during the opening ceremony, he conveyed the contents of a letter from President Xi Jinping that emphasised the importance of cultural dialogue and mutual learning to strengthen friendship and advance modernisation. President Xi called for closer ties between China and Africa’s 2.8 billion people, promoting Global South solidarity and building a shared future for humanity. 

From his meeting with the Chairperson of the African Union (AU), H.E. Mahmoud Youssouf, FM Wang Yi issued a joint call to uphold international law, sovereignty and territorial integrity, given what had just happened in Venezuela and what is going on with Greenland.  FM Wang Yi emphasised the idea of African solutions to African problems, and China would play a predictable supportive long-term partner of the journey through its Global Security Initiative and Global Governance Initiative to bolster the AU agenda 2063 and African Union silencing the guns initiative by 2030. For China, a peaceful Africa is very important for regional and global trade if prosperity for all is to be achieved.

China has tried to put peace at the forefront of its agenda in the greater East African region since 2022 actively, when it put in place a special envoy for the Horn of Africa whose objective and task is to resolve conflicts through integration of infrastructure projects like ports and railways rather than political meddling.

Wang Yi's trip to Somalia was called off at the last moment for reasons not yet clear, but possibly security. The fact that Mogadishu was on the list was a big statement just after Tel Aviv tried to compromise the territorial integrity of the country by recognising Somaliland as an independent state. It was more than a diplomatic gesture because China can relate especially to its situation with Taiwan.

2026 marks 50 years of the Tanzania-Zambia railway, the famous TAZARA, which makes Tanzania a very huge strategic piece for China, not just in East Africa but on the continent. TAZARA connects the Indian Ocean supply chain to the Zambia and DRC mineral deposits and is a huge rival to the US song of the Lobito Corridor that connects Zambia to the Atlantic, but Tanzania for China is more than a supply chain piece. The Chinese Leadership School on the African continent is also set up in a country that is supposed to link various African parties to the CCP. FM Wang Yi’s visit to Tanzania would also go a long way to support the new Administration that started off on rocky grounds, as it was tested from its core a few weeks back.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s last stop was in the South of the continent to the tiny nation of Lesotho, a country that is fully surrounded by South Africa. Lesotho has been at the receiving end of President Trump’s Mafia diplomacy of late. It was severely affected by Mr Trump’s tariffs when he slapped a 50% that has since been reduced to 15%, which is still huge for the small nation. Lesotho has also been seriously affected by the halting of AGOA, which was very critical to its textile industry, and they did negotiate with China for alternatives for their products, especially now that, through FOCAC, Africa has zero tariffs access to the Chinese market.

At the end of the day, FM Wang Yi’s 2026 tour of Africa will go down as a strategic attempt to reinforce Beijing’s role as an alternative geopolitical and geoeconomic pole that offers the global South in general a special avenue of engagement centred on sovereignty, development and institutional partnerships.

The writer is a research fellow at the Sino-Uganda Research Centre