‘The Key to solving all problems’? Unpacking China’s development-as-security approach in Mali

Abstract

There is a robust scholarship examining the security–development nexus in international development and international security studies. However, this scholarship has thus far mainly offered perspectives from Western actors and traditional development agencies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This article makes a theoretical and an empirical contribution to the literature by rethinking the security–development nexus from the perspective of Chinese foreign assistance practices. Theoretically, we submit that the nexus rests on different assumptions when studied from a non-OECD perspective. That is, instead of the increasingly militarised development industry arising from the US-led global War on Terror, security has been understood by China in terms of economic growth and development opportunities. Consequently, we argue that development-as-security better captures Chinese foreign policy approaches to the nexus. Empirically, the article offers an evaluation of the application of China’s development-as-security nexus. It examines this nexus in the context of the ongoing crisis in Mali. Additionally, in light of Xi Jinping’s recently announced Global Security Initiative, this article offers an empirical assessment of the potentials and challenges of China’s development-centred approach to peace.

Keywords:

• Development
• security
• China
• peacekeeping
• Mali

Acknowledgements

This research was made possible through funding from the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS-CARI) and Wake Forest University. We thank Deborah Brautigam for her support and Yoon Jung Park for her helpful feedback on multiple iterations of this paper. We also thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors of Third World Quarterly for their very helpful comments. Our fieldwork research in Bamako could not have been as fruitful without the help of many wonderful colleagues. Jaimie Bleck, Mamadou Bodian, Yahya Ibrahim Yahia, Hannah Armstrong and Will Reno among others helped us find interlocuters and opened many doors to us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We obtained the necessary Institutional Review Board (IRB) clearance to conduct fieldwork research (IRB00023112).

2 These include the nexus as a modern (teleological) narrative, as humanised (drawing on the human security paradigm), the nexus as a technique of governmentality, the post-development nexus, and as globalised. See Stern and Öjendal (2010).

3 For more details on Mali’s ethnic distribution, see Bleck et al. (2016, 7). For the broader historical context, see Thurston (2020).

4 For more on Malians’ perceptions of the government’s performance during the crisis, see Bleck et al. (2016) and Thiam (2015).

5 China’s Ambassador to Mali, 2017 (authors’ translation). See Bamada (2017) for the original.

6 See for example https://twitter.com/Chine_au_Mali/status/1202557485019742208.

7 This is seen, for example, in Mali’s Minister of Mines attending energy meetings in Beijing to attract more investments from Chinese companies and a project to build a mining laboratory in Mali funded by Beijing. See Bolly (2014).

8 In 2002, Mali received a Chinese government loan to build five football stadiums, which were used when Mali hosted the 2002 Africa Cup of Nations.

9 Irrigated sugarcane production started in the 1960s at Dougabougou, but production declined in the 1970s. In 1996, the Malian government and Sinolight established a joint venture, Sukala-SA, to rejuvenate sugar production.

10 Authors’ interview with the MINUSMA Force commander, UNHQ, Bamako, December 2019.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Wake Forest University under Archie Grant number FD6100.

Notes on contributors

Lina Benabdallah

Lina Benabdallah is Assistant Professor at Wake Forest University. She is the author of Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge Production and Network-Building in China–Africa Relations (University of Michigan Press, 2020). [email protected]

Daniel Large

Daniel Large is Associate Professor at Central European University, Austria. His publications include China and Africa: The New Era (Polity, 2021), and New Directions in the Study of Africa and China (Routledge, 2018), co-edited with Chris Alden. [email protected]