A customer experiences a new energy vehicle (NEV) at a dealership of renowned Chinese NEV maker BYD in Kigali, capital of Rwanda, on Aug. 16. China’s NEVs are helping Africa with green transformation in transportation. Photo: XINHUA 

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According to the Sustainable Development Report 2024 released by the United Nations, only 16% of the Sustainable Development Goals are on track to be met globally by 2030; the remaining 84% are either making limited progress or experiencing setbacks. With momentous changes unseen in a century unfolding worldwide, global sustainable development faces unprecedented challenges. 

At present, the international development system is undergoing disruptive changes, with international public goods emerging as a new mechanism to promote global progress, replacing traditional official development assistance. In light of these changes, CSST recently spoke with Dennis Munene, executive director of the China-Africa Center at the Nairobi-based Africa Policy Institute in Kenya. 

Challenges to int’l development 

International development in the modern sense stemmed from the Marshall Plan following WWII, which played a critical role in maintaining the post-war global order. Recipients of assistance gradually extended from European countries to developing nations in other regions. Munene explained that after the first and second world wars, a number of developing countries that attained independence from their former colonial rulers were experiencing acute underdevelopment. Bilateral and multilateral aid became the traditional international development policies at the regional and global levels to lift those from the Global South out of abject poverty. 

However, “these traditional international development policies have faced criticisms for imposing Western models and priorities that do not always align with local contexts or needs,” Munene stated. “Often, development policies are designed without a deep understanding of the local social, cultural, and economic contexts, leading to misaligned interventions.”

For example, in the 1980s and 1990s—rightly dubbed as the “Lost Decades”—the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund adversely affected the continent of Africa, leading to overall economic failure and destructive social consequences, Munene noted. The development partners from Bretton Woods institutions failed to understand the African economic problem and so designed the SAPs, a program which could not stimulate growth. Further, the world bodies presumed that African economies were at similar levels of development and were experiencing similar problems.

“The ongoing conflicts and political instability, and persistent rising inequalities in various regions, especially in Africa, have hindered the effective implementation of international development policies. Also, due to internal issues, most of the Western-led countries began to experience donor fatigue, with some cutting down on both bilateral and multilateral aid to countries in the Global South,” Munene continued. “At the global level, the anti-globalization trends such as the politics of isolationism, unilateralism, and debt-trap narrative have become the greatest challenges affecting the international development policies,” he added. 

In this context, emerging economies such as China began to reengineer traditional development policies and focus more on promoting trade, finance, infrastructure, and peaceful development. “This shift of development policy is more sustainable,” Munene said. Termed as global public goods, the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, and Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) have all focused on economic partnerships that are transformative in nature and support the attainment of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.  

Countering Western narratives

In contrast to the call for common development advocated by developing nations, including China, Western narratives often perpetuate confrontational politics and a Cold War mentality. For example, American political scientist Samuel Huntington opined that conflict between civilizations will be the next phase in the evolution of conflict in the modern world. China, on the other hand, put forward the GCI. 

Munene stressed that the GCI advocates for the common values of humanity, including peace, development, equity, justice, democracy, and freedom, which act as irreducible minimums to humanity’s modernization path. “The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation signifies cooperation between civilizations as opposed to clash of civilizations,” he said. 

Later, American political scientist Graham Tillett Allison Jr. argued that the rise of a new superpower inevitably leads to a cataclysmic conflict with the established power, implying that the United States and China are destined to clash. Munene refutes this idea, stating, “This is not true. China is countering this notion through peaceful development. For China, peaceful development must not be the monopoly of a few countries, or specific classes or segments of society. It must be shared prosperity. This is why China is moving out of its own borders to ensure prosperity in parts of Africa and other parts of the world in order to realize peaceful coexistence and development.”

Munene pointed out that the new narrative in international development is the “overcapacity narrative” from the Western-led countries to contain Beijing’s “Made in China” drive on new energy vehicles, photovoltaics, and lithium batteries. “This Western-led overcapacity narrative is more of protecting their markets than focusing on global efforts to reduce carbon emissions,” he said. 

China is relating to the global community through the concept of ecological civilization, which will stabilize the world order that has endured tremors linked to rise of populism in the West, as well as climate change, conflicts, economic slowdowns and terrorism, Munene predicted. 

As Munene observed, China is also relating to the world through the notion of true multilateralism. “The old multilateralism enhanced Western hegemony. The BRI signifies the new multilateralism that China is waving in the world’s face. This version of multilateralism is more global in its outlook, and is bringing both the northern and southern hemispheres together.”  

Edited by CHEN MIRONG