The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit gets underway in Beijing soon, but you’d hardly know that this was once a really big deal. The vibe this year is noticeably different than in the run-up to past FOCACs, when African think tanks released working papers, scholars in the U.S. and Europe were booked solid for seminars, and there was constant news coverage. So far, very little of that is happening.
In Africa, there seems to be a malaise about the whole thing. Other than a flood of fawning Chinese-sponsored media extolling FOCAC, major news outlets in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria that largely drive the African news cycle are all pre-occupied with other stories — mostly their own domestic politics.
