China will begin building the headquarters of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) in Abuja, Nigeria to the tune of $32 million, setting a trend where Beijing has influential fingerprints over regional blocs on the continent.

The Chinese have already broken ground for the head offices of the Ecowas secretariat, which China says is a donation of friendship.

Beijing has already built the headquarters of the African Union (AU) and several institutional buildings across Africa, including the parliament building in Harare, Zimbabwe.

In January 2012, African heads of state and governments met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to commission a new $200 million 12-storey Secretariat donated by China to the to serve as the organisation’s headquarters.

CDC headquarters

China is also building Africa Centre for Disease Control (CDC) headquarters expected to be completed early next year.

Apart from cash gifts and aide to Africa and their blocs, China also built the $140 million Zimbabwe parliament which was commissioned in July 2022.

In what it calls “strengthening friendship, solidarity and cooperation for a new era of common development’’ with Africa, China, aside from loans, has doled out various forms of financial assistance and made donations to cushion against the effects of health-related crises.

According to the ministry of foreign affairs of the People’s Republic of China, the country had delivered over $3 billion out of the $10 billion of credit facilities pledged to African financial institutions, and nearly $2.5 billion in loans were channelled to Africa’s priority programmes.

The ministry added that China’s import of African goods within seven months reached $70.6 billion.

In a publication released on September 19, 2022, the ministry said Chinese companies have invested $2.17 billion in Africa and “we are prepared to, through the IMF’s two trusts, re-channel 10 billion US dollars of its SDR to Africa, and encourage the IMF to direct China’s contributions to Africa”.