 On behalf of the United States Institute of Peace, we are very pleased to welcome you to this timely discussion on the peace and security dimensions of cooperation between China and Africa. My name is Elise Grande, and I am the President of USIP, which was established by Congress in 1984 as an independent, nonpartisan national institution dedicated to preventing, mitigating, and helping resolve violent conflict abroad. As we all know, China is a major player in Africa's peace and security landscape, and will almost certainly play an even bigger role in the years ahead. Already, China has contributed to UN peacekeeping forces on the continent, is funding Africa's regional institutions, has extended military cooperation, established a military base, and has acted in Africa's arms and technology markets. As a better way of understanding the dynamics of security cooperation on the continent, we'll be reflecting this morning on the outcomes of the recent China-Africa forum. Our distinguished speakers will help us to examine the significance of the peace and security cooperation commitments contained in the forum's action plan, and we'll be reflecting together on China's intentions, its policies, and its actions in Africa. The stakes are high. This past year, Africa has experienced a number of coups, continuing instability caused by the strata violent extremism and the fallout from a number of ongoing civil conflicts across the continent. We are delighted to host this conversation, and we invite everyone to pose your questions via the chat function on our website. We also welcome you to follow the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag at USIPFOCAC. I'm very pleased to welcome Heather Ashby from USIP's Strategic Stability and Security Office, who will be introducing our speakers and facilitating this morning's discussion. Thank you so much, Lise, and thank you to everyone attending. I'm thrilled to introduce our speakers to you this morning. We will begin with Abdul Hakim Ajijola, who chairs the African Union's Cybersecurity Expert Group and advises various governmental and non-governmental committees on cybersecurity across the continent. His work in this ever-evolving field has focused on the implications for peace and development, so it's a great joy to have him here to speak with us today on these intersections. Our second speaker is Dr. Garth LePair, a professor at the University of Pretoria. He has extensively covered previous FOCAC engagements in his academic writings and will guide us through how peace and security cooperation has evolved through these forums. We will then have 15 minutes for questions and answers. Inclusion, the vice president of USIP's Africa Center, Dr. Sonny will offer some reflections on today's discussion. And so we're gonna start with a few questions to our panelists after they do their introductions. Over to you, Mr. Ajijola. Thank you very much for inviting me to share my thoughts. I will focus on the cybersecurity issues that immediately come to mind, so that I'll let others focus on some of the other broader policy issues. But let me start by saying that we are no longer protecting computers. We're actually protecting society. This is something that I have heard from people like Nico Hyphonen. And I think it's very important for us to keep this in mind as we take these discussions forward. Also, I would like to point out that for many of us, we view cybersecurity, for example, as an opportunity for Africa to create wealth and jobs and as a byproduct for governments to generate revenue through taxes. The African cybersecurity market is estimated at about $2.32 billion, and this was in 2020, and is estimated to grow to about $4.5 billion by 2025. And so there is an opportunity for Africa to become, to make itself a cybersecurity profit center, not simply an organizational cost center. And therefore, there are skills must develop. And there's an environment we must create to turn some of these threats into opportunities and to turn some of those nations, in this case, China, some of the threats that they pose to us to try and convert them into certain opportunities. Now, with regards to China Africa cooperation, especially in a cyber realm, but like any other relationship, there are benefits and challenges. Many have articulated the socioeconomic benefits of which there are many in other fora. So I would like to look at some of the related challenges and threats. First of all, we've seen malware in our African supply chains. There was a case of the Chinese techno brand of phones, which apparently got infected with some kind of malware during its manufacturing process. Again, that's in China. And we have to understand that the people that buy these kinds of low cost smartphones themselves are not people of high financial capacity. And so the double tragedy of this was that people who could not afford it had their data stolen using their bandwidth, which is disproportionately expensive, not just across Africa, but to those specific people. But again, in casting aspersions about any specific nation, we must not forget that even high-end smartphones have key components that are made in those nations that do cast these aspersions. And furthermore, experience has shown that we cannot uninstall or remove apps from even well-established products. Samsung has Bixby, Google has, I mean, Apple has Siri. So these things go on and on and on. So it's not really just China that we're looking at from an African perspective. It's other countries. In addition, we've seen, for example, India blocked, I think back in 2020, about 118 mobile apps, principally from China. And the idea or the excuse was that they challenged India's national security and sovereignty, again, is it actually that or was it because China and India have an ongoing set of challenges? But it does raise questions about what's coming when we look at the issues of some private conversations that the African Union videos and documents that seem to have been exfiltrated. There are many questions, but I think the bottom line really is that there are things that Africa and Africans have to do to protect themselves. And so we do need to look at our supply chains. I'm not always sure that outright banning of some of these apps and software is necessarily the right way to go. Now, another challenge that we have seen across Africa is the expected emergence of digital currencies. When we look at a government-backed currency such as the digital yuan, it does raise the specter of a challenge to African nations, particularly those who are in charge of finance, those who are in charge of setting monetary policy and controlling monetary supply because the digital yuan as a Chinese digital currency will not answer to African regulators. It will answer to the regulators in China. So the question is from a national sovereignty point of view, who controls your monetary policy and who will control your money supply? We must not forget in this particular instance, China has the upper hand. Because of political, financial and economic influences that it has, Africa and many of its nations owe substantial debts in terms of directly to China. China, as you've noted earlier, has a lot of investments and there is definitely a trade imbalance. And again, it boils down to this debt. But we must also appreciate that since the year 2000, China has accumulated significant influence over Africa's technology stock. Close to 50% that is five zero of the mobile handset market are Chinese manufactured phones. But more importantly, at least 20% that is seven zero of the mobile network layer across Africa are Chinese. So African nations may find it very difficult to say no to China's digital currency. Indeed, in October, 2020, the Huawei's make smartphone was launched in South Africa and it actually has an inbuilt hardware wallet for its digital currency, which would make it quote unquote, very easy for us to slip into. And then we have another example from the Africa Afrinic. And basically, Afrinic is the body that manages the African IP address system. It manages those resources handed down from the global body, the ICANN, and manages it for the African region. And it turned out that about 5% of our total stock of IPv4 addresses, about 6.2 million addresses, value that $150 million had ostensibly been misappropriated by a single firm in Hong Kong. Excuse me. While this misappropriation was clearly aided and debated by a disgraced Afrinic executive, when the new management of Afrinic tried to recover these addresses, this Hong Kong company took the organization to court and actually got a court injunction freezing the organization's assets, thereby not only imperiling Africa's IP address system, but actually the global internet address system. And so this as an instance of where something has gone wrong, again, one would argue it wasn't necessarily state policy, but certainly that there is an inability or a functioning agency in Africa to do something as fundamental as ensuring that African IP addresses remain in African hands, frankly is a direct threat to internet freedom and inflammation sovereignty across the continent. And so unfortunately, the Afrinic IP address debacle is not necessarily an isolated event, but certainly is indicative of a broader trend and tendency among African elites to fail to take cyber threats seriously and govern information resources with high degree of accountability. In terms of, for example, digital currency, the digital yuan is not the only currency out there. We know about Bitcoin. Now, Bitcoin has is the distributed currency. It has no owner, it has no center. And again, that goes to the heart of who controls within an African nation, money supply, who controls monetary policy. We're seeing the emergence of the Facebook DM. Again, Facebook DM does not answer to any African regulator per se, but answers first and foremost to shape Facebook shareholders and then possibly to regulators in California before you even talk of the national regulators. But on the other side, we are seeing efforts, and again, or rather from other nations, seeing efforts on the commoditization of broadband, which in of itself is not bad. And I'm referring to projects like Elon Musk's Starlink, Project Juniper, Jeff Bezos, and OneWeb in the UK, which is actually a British Indian, now a British Indian consortium. And the question for many of us across Africa is when our data is these satellites, it's these quote unquote foreign satellite, what happens to it? Who controls it? Indeed, who owns it? What are the privacy implications and where are these things going to be? I'd just like to quickly also touch on the use of artificial intelligence and these technologies in the battlefield. There are different philosophies, and for us to sustainably address some of the challenges we are seeing, and that is from a philosophical point of view, we see the West focus more on eliminating false positives, arguably not earning and killing innocents, whereas we see from China and also from Russia, they tend to focus on eliminating false negatives, and that is not to earn in letting potential threats through. And as African, it is imperative that our current middle level national security operatives, civil society and indeed academia think through what are African philosophies? What are our ethics? What are our imperatives? Because that's the basis for developing the requisite policy and strategies. And those middle level operatives have to appreciate that they are actually the generation that will determine and lay the foundations for those philosophies, ethics, policies and strategies, and indeed accountability frameworks that are now rooted in the African culture and worldview that future generations of African strategies will follow. Very quickly, we've also seen in the previous American administration, the Trump administration, is something that Professor Joseph Nye Harvard Professor Emeritus described as the weaponization of interdependence. And really, I think that African nations must be able to moderate and adapt to the realities of a multipolar world of technology. They need to build proficiency in monitoring and proactively navigating complex and varied economic, social, commercial technology privacy and indeed connectivity relationships as they relate to cyberspace. We do need to motivate much more research and development and empower Africans to develop indigenous solutions so that we minimize this near total dependency we currently have on single external parties. Else things will not change. And even though with the improved tone from Washington, a lot of those underlying things that are of concern to us are there. So we need to as Africans understand and decide what we want. I think it's also important that African priorities are not vendor driven. And specifically for those Africans in the audience today, I would pose a few thoughts for you to think of, a few things for you to think about. Who will protect the digital African? If not you and I, then whom? That for me is the bottom line. Who is the digital African frankly? It's the youth, it's our children and maybe a few of us who have some capacity to use some of these technologies. And we must understand that the mama that makes the fruit by the side of the road, the vulcanizer, the street vendor, they're all carrying these phones. They're all able to check their bank statements online. So they are the digital African. And I would propose secondly that you consider how we can grow a micro small and medium-scale based cybersecurity solutions, economic sub-sector so that we can empower young Africans with the ability to develop solutions so that they are part of the solution, not part of the problem. And thirdly, it is so important that we ensure that we get our women and youth into IT security and evolve them into power players. Because frankly, no societies or economy is going to make significant headway if it does not leverage 50% of our population with our women and another 40% which are male youth. So for us to address these challenges, I think it's important that we begin to think about some of these ideas. We begin to articulate ways forward. And I think I'll leave it for that for now. Thank you very much. All right, great. Thank you, Mr. Ajijola for those remarks. I just want to remind our attendees today that you can submit questions in the chat box on the USIP webpage. And now Dr. LePair, we welcome your remarks. Yeah, thank you very much. And good afternoon to everybody from South Africa. So I'm going to talk broadly about the peace and security landscape. China's China and Africa's peace and security landscape in Africa. And to start with, what is the logic behind the interests between continent of Africa and China? Well, on the one hand, there are China's wide array of mercantilist interests, economic assets in Africa, the rising number of Chinese workers and businesses and crucially how these may be protected. The other hand is the big systemic picture. And that is how China wishes to enhance its image as a responsible rising power that is providing global public goods. So those are essentially, I think the drivers behind this logic are put differently. My good friend or my professor Chris Alden, he digest this into three imperatives, three security imperatives. The first is what he calls the imperative of reputational security, which is all about China's local and global image. The second is the imperative of firm level security, which is all about maintaining and protecting its economic and business interests. And then the third is the imperative of citizens security to guard against rising criminality against its workers and increasing numbers of tourists that will come from China to Africa. For that as preliminary remarks as an introduction, let me then highlight what I think are some of the main normative conceptual policy threats that define China's peace and security nexus in Africa. Let's do observe that both China and Africa see great benefit in forms of dramatic cooperation, which is based on a template of peace and security interests that are operative, operative, that are pre-encive, that are sustainable. So important to bear in mind that that template is based on those three sort of normative goals of collaboration, pre-enciveness, and sustainability. So let me just sort of sketch what I think are the interesting manifestations and characteristics that define this template and begin with the July 2019 China-Africa Peace and Security Forum, which was held in Beijing and which was meant, essentially, to be life into the vision and ambition of this template. Now, just to note here that the forum drives from now on to underscore this, growing institutionalization of China-Africa and security relations, especially since the establishment of the China-Africa Operative Partnership, Peace and Security in 2012. Well, that partnership now is eight years old. And that partnership, the cooperative partnership was established into the auspices of the Forum on China Africa Corporation, which is now, probably, not probably, it is the oldest forums that China has with any region. Now, regarding the 2019 forum, it is interesting to note who attended that forum. It was attended by 100 senior representatives from 50 African countries at the African Union, including 15 defense ministers and chiefs of general staff. So a very high-level profile of representatives from the continent matched the Chinese side by equal levels of seniority, including the opening of the forum by President Xi Jinping himself. So what are the articulations then of China's strategic engagement on peace and security? Yeah, I just want to emphasize what I think are the two important normative anchors. These are building mutuality of interests, on the one hand, developing the responsiveness mechanism to support Africa's still very embryonic and fragile security architecture. Very important to note in this regard here and also to emphasize this is China's contribution to seven UN peacekeeping operations and missions in Africa. There are 14 UN peacekeeping missions worldwide, so seven or 50% of those are in Africa, where China has the largest number of peacekeepers of all UN permanent members. Mindful, of course, that the business of the Security Council, bulk of the business, almost 70% of it, by the way, is taken up with threats to peace and security which emanate from the African continent. Now there are forms of additional support for Africa's peace and security architecture which extends to three areas. And that is the first, establishing Africa's own standby force for peacekeeping and peace conflict is building. And then secondly, forming the African Union's mechanism for peace cooperation. And thirdly, setting up the African center for the study and research on terrorism. So all this activity is funded through China Africa Peace and Security Fund for which China made 100 million US dollars available as part of the 2019-2021 Beijing Action Plan of the Forum for China Africa Corporation. It's also professional and political exchanges which is an important component of this peace and security cooperation between the People's Liberation Army, the PLA and African countries. So yeah, some facts. Between 2020-19, there were 18 military girls, 13, 30 naval visits and 300 exchanges and dialogues. Let me also mention that China has its own security firms which are registered for its ports where it has, you know, threat interest, its oil and gas pipelines, as well as working with local police and security forces to protect citizens and businesses. And then there's also, importantly, you know, the problem of combating piracy which is providing armed maritime escort operations. Then there are two registers that also support at the bilateral country level and the multilateral, sub-regional and continental level should be noted. Thus we got China provides extensive support for an array of projects and programs such as combating terrorism, combating religious fundamentalism, drugs, human trafficking, the things that are about cyber challenges as well as piracy. Then there's also, you know, small arms proliferation. However, however, however, behind this virtual circle, there are controversial sales of arms who are highly autocratic, from fragile and aggressive regimes, which takes place under the number of secrecy which are nevertheless, I mean, these arms sales programs to countries are nevertheless a highly significant feature China's military involvement in Africa. Primarily, primarily because Chinese arms industry has become extremely price competitive and increasingly sophisticated compared to the traditional unsupplying rivals primarily the United States and Russia. According, you know, to the Stockholm International Research Institute CIPRI between 2014 and 2019, Africa accounted for 20% of Chinese arms exports banking after Asia and Oceania at 70% and the Middle East at 6%. Well, let me then conclude here referring to the Dakar Action Plan. So the Dakar Action Plan was the last action plan that evolved out of the foreign factories of China, Africa, and a sterile meeting we did not take place at summit level in Dakar last September, and it came up with this action plan for 2022 to 2024. It has nine programs worth 40 billion, but I just want to highlight two that I think are special interests that sort of inform my conclusion. The first is that China will deliver a million doses of its COVID vaccine to Africa this year. The second is that it will undertake 10 additional expanded projects on peace and security in support of the African peace and security architecture. Mention these examples by way of conclusion simply to suggest that there is a fundamental philosophical difference in peace and security matters between Western countries involved in Africa, mainly the United States and the European Union, compared to China's. So simply put as a binary here, the orientation of the West is to promote what I call a liberal peace in Africa based on conditionalities of democracy and human rights. While there of China is a non-conditional developmental peace based on growth and stability. And I'd like to include that rather provocative and controversial, and thank you very much. All right, thank you so much for your remarks. Now I'll open it up for Q&A and just to remind our audience that you can ask questions in the chat box on the USIP webpage. And as those come up, we'll pose them to our panelists. And so I will get it started with two questions to our panelists. Mr. Ajijola, technologies enabled with artificial intelligence are becoming more prevalent across the African continent. China and the US are both at the forefront of these developments. What impact do you think such technologies might have on conflicts in the region for good or bad? I think the impacts are likely to be profound. I think where the major challenge for a lot of African, let me not say African nations, African societies will be is in the utilizing and leveraging of these technologies in an accountable manner. What we have seen or what we are observing is that honestly a lot of African nations, and I'm talking about the governments, tend to be possibly the more culpable party. And so, and while one is appreciating that there is a need for some of these norms, whether it's norms in cyberspace, norms on the utilization of artificial intelligence, I think that African governments themselves have a long way to go, not all, but quite a few in terms of cleaning up their acting, in terms of being accountable to those that they govern. They govern. The second challenge I see is that many times AI systems might be developed in one environment for a certain purpose and then repurposed in a different environment. And so, the training data that might be used in California or in China might be very, very different. And for example, we've read about where certain AI systems that are used to identify people have more difficulty identifying people with darker skin color. So, if you bring these AI systems from these other environments, who then is ultimately responsible if they misidentify or in some other manner malfunction? And so, I think there are a lot of areas for us to not only be concerned about, but to begin to address, in terms of thinking things through properly. I hope that helps. Yes, that definitely helps. Thank you. Dr. Lepeer, can you tell us a little bit more about the China Africa Forum on Peace and Security held in 2019 and what you think we might expect at the second iteration of this forum later this year? Thomas Ashby, in my remarks, I essentially stressed the contours and the outcomes of that forum. And it really pulls on the partnership, Peace and Security partnership, part of partnership that was put in place in 2012. What is important to note here is that, the broad sequencing, the agenda of activities, the funding that is made available, the modalities of support beyond military engagement, these are framed by the Forum for China Africa Corporation established in 2000. And this is a forum that takes place as a annual forum that alternates between China and an African country. And what I see really is a maturation, if you will, in striving for greater symmetry between the contributions and the inputs of the African partners on the one hand, so that's the bilateral dimension. And important to note here that China, since shall we say, around 2000 establishments of the Forum for China Africa Corporation, now has official bilateral relations with 50 countries, 53 countries actually, there's only one that's still retained official relations with, and that is Swatini, Swaziland. Well, China has great electoral chemistry with countries developed over the life of this focus process. But we'll call that the first generation engagement. Usually the second generation engagement is at the sub-regional, there are five sub-regional, what's called regional economic communities, the African Union. There is a growing maturation in China's engagement and sensitivity to how the regional economic communities work in terms of their peace and security interests and challenges, as well as broadly the continental agenda as defined by the African peace and security architecture. So the foundation of the 2019 Forum really anticipates both identifying further areas, such as what we talked about around cyber security, but also the range of other things that I mentioned, combating terrorism, the low intensity conflicts, the problems of heresy, et cetera, et cetera. What is important here is that China, is increasingly being drawn into a vortex of direct engagement on peace and security matters that de facto has caused it to abandon the non-interference principle. That was sort of a sacrosanct principle of China's engagement in Africa. You can go back to China lies, was it in the 1960s, and his enunciation of principles that would govern the China-Africa interface. Well, the increasing involvement in terms of the principles that I've mentioned, the logics that I've mentioned, protecting its interest in Africa, the highly unstable environment, as well as at the multilateral level, the level of the UN and the Security Council being seen directly contributing global peace and security with a focus on Africa as the major concern in the UN peace and security council. So I think there's a certain momentum, there's a certain very constructive engagement where the voices of African countries increasingly find expression in how Africa then responds to protecting its own interests and the extent to which there is this kind of mutuality in protecting those interests but also enhancing the quality and growth in Africa. Thank you. And I just want to remind the audience that you can ask questions in the chat box on the USIP webpage. And so we had a few questions come in. The first one relates to a point that you made, Mr. Ajijola. Is it possible that the Hong Kong company that you mentioned is the front of a Chinese company? In other words, are any decision makers worried about any ulterior motives from China and controlling connectivity in Africa? I think the truth from my perspective is that we don't know. I mean, the chief executive, the primary driver of the company seems to be... Now I can't remember. Is he from mainland China or a native of Hong Kong? But from the African perspective, generally speaking, it's a Chinese company as far as we are concerned. Are there any deeper motives other than greed we don't know? Or certainly I don't know. So it would be very difficult for me to say. But I think given things that we've seen at times, one would not be unduly surprised to find out that there were some other deeper connections. However, and I'm sorry, I'm trying to give different sides of this perspective. Many of the misallocated or misappropriated IP addresses were actually sold on to people who needed IP addresses that were outside of China, especially mainland China, that use them to host pornographic websites, gambling websites, and things that arguably the Communist Party of China itself or at least publicly frowns at. And so does that mean that there is no relationship? I really can't say. But I would like to just quickly build on something that I heard from Professor Dha. One of the areas I think, and it's a global South problem. It's not just an African problem, but it's to do with the nature of the agreements that we have with nations like China in various sectors. And I say this as an African, and we're talking about Africa. It seems sometimes we have difficulty in negotiating fair and mutually beneficial agreements. Often when you see, especially the agreement templates that Africans adopt, they don't always seem to have had the requisite depth of thought. Is it because the Africans are in a hurry? Is it because sometimes we feel a little desperate? Is it because we feel the other side may have advantages over us? I'm not quite sure why, but like I said, I think the nature of some of the agreements you know, as I say, there's no free lunch. And so when somebody wants to give you something, that's too good to be true, sometimes you do have to wonder. Thank you. All right, great. Our next question is for Dr. LePair. Professor LePair, what is China's role in fighting or contributing to piracy in African waters? Well, I think quite significant. Again, you know, going back to what I said about the day factor of the non-interference principle. And there is a example in the Gulf of Aden, you know, of the Horn of Africa, which was a hotbed for piracy activity where China's frigates became part of a multilateral naval force, which included the European Union and the United States in combating piracy. So I think that was a very significant move by China to become engaged in a multilateral initiative, a multilateral effort in combating piracy in an area that was a very difficult place, by the way. You know, given the wide expanse of the maritime frontier there, the difficulty of, you know, increasing that particular area. And, you know, I think the joint initiative, the endeavor, the multilateral endeavor with China being part of this made a huge difference in sort of entirely combating it, but making major inroads into dealing with the problem of the high seas of the Gulf of Aden and of the Horn of Africa. Thank you. And so this question is to both of our speakers. Is there an African government or government that stands out and navigate and even exploit in Chinese U.S. tensions particularly well? And are there methods applicable to other African countries? I don't know, not as far as I know. I would like to touch on the issue of piracy, if you don't mind for just a second. And maybe, again, Professor Lefebvre might be in a better position to answer this in terms of what is it that we consider as piracy, you know, especially related, for example, to the theft through overfishing of African maritime resources, which is what we see a lot of in the West African coastal area. And a lot of this overfishing, though some of it is by European trawlers, a lot are from the Far East. And then just again, maybe, sorry, Professor Lefebvre, maybe this is something you can also help us shed a little more light on. We recently heard about the hack and the declaration of force majeure by the, is it Transnet that controls the four of South Africa's ports, especially the port in Durban and the related South African pipelines. The South African authorities, to the best of my knowledge, never really attributed the source of that hack. And there has been some speculation that the source has come from the East. And I'd be very curious, sorry, I'm putting an audience hat just to find out if Professor Lefebvre has any thoughts on piracy and the Transnet hack. Thank you. I have to plead ignorance on that one, Abdullah Kim. I really don't know. I read about it in the news that there was an investigation. And it was not only the East. There was speculation. It was really subject to all sort of speculative interpretation. First, we heard it was from the East. And then we heard it could be via a sort of Indian mafia in South Africa. And then we heard that it was an Indian mafia working with the criminal underworld of African countries to exploit the weak underbelly of Transnet. You're probably in a better position to tell us that the ability to have a cyber crime in countries such as South Africa were very weak, weak, I suppose, in my view. You know, there are national interest facts that I think our intelligence is not capable of providing early warning mechanisms of. And merely know Abdullah Kim because of the 10 years of, you know, egregious and pathological state capture of security agencies now from a president. There's been a broad institutional decay, particularly in intelligence services, particularly in the SSI, the state security agency, which has now migrated into the office of the president so that you don't have direct oversight. But, you know, the end of rock is widespread across intelligence agencies because there are operatives that still work in there. And in a very transactional way, by the way, Abdullah Kim, able to sell state secrets, you know, this criminal underworld. I mean, coming to this question on American U.S. tensions, it's a complex one, hey, but I think that there's been a retrenchment of American military interests. The United States has a military presence in Africa by way of Africa, right? In the United States, there's this architecture of high command spread across the world. And in Africa, it's called Africa, the African command. And there is quite a substantial military presence in Djibouti, one of Africa. The African Union, I think has taken a very direct position that unless external partners can support the broad architecture of peace and security beyond direct military intervention and, you know, protecting country interests, protecting American interests in the U.S., in Africa by way of military engagement, that beyond that, you know, the African Union will be rather wary of exploiting differences and tensions between China and the United States that do not enhance the broad agenda of the constitutive act of the African Union and the peace and security agenda. Well, I mean, a big military presence will be the French, European Union also has, you know, its own military and peace and security and frameworks, but I do not see these as being indirect competition with China, let's say. I think through the African Union and what I mentioned as the second generation of the collaboration beyond the bilateral at the level of the African Union, the African Union has now created a forum, a multilateral forum for peace and security cooperation with the United States, China, as well as individual countries of the European Union, France, Britain, primarily, as well as the European Union as a peer form part of a peace and security dialogue. That's on the one hand. On the other hand, I think it's quite important to note that the African Union has now been placed what is called the African Continental Free Trade Agreement. It is quite an important development of what countries have now signed onto the AFC, FTA, as it is called, the majority of countries have now ratified the agreement, to make Africa the largest free trade area in terms of the number of countries in the world. And this is really an invitation for all the external partners to support the integration impulses that come with the AFC, FTA. A great opportunity for the United States, for China, for all the external partners to drive a difference sort of trade and development agenda, which of course has to be informed by the peace and security environment where all these countries play some role, for better or for worse, where China has become really a major peer. So the long and the short answer is that, especially during the presidency of Donald Trump, especially during the Trump, a great retrenchment of interest by the United States in Africa. There was sort of the, was the American Africa Presidential Summit. I don't think that has taken place since the days of Bill Clinton. I don't think that that summit has been convened since then. Well, broadly, I mean, the point to be made is that, you know, the United States has a wide cooperation, is in security interest by the United States and the European Union in Africa has declined quite substantially. And China then has taken advantage, you know, of those strategic spaces left by the United States and the European Union, like its presence felt in ways that has not happened in the last 15 years. Thank you to both of our panelists today for their great remarks, as well as the answers to the questions that came in through the chat. As we're concluding the event, I will turn over to Dr. Joseph Sonny, the vice president of the Africa Center at the U.S. Institute of Peace for closing remarks. Thank you, Dr. Ashby, and thank you for moderating the conversation. This has been an excellent conversation. Generally, when we discuss China, we often bring in a Washington perspective, which doesn't reflect the complete picture and the complex reality on the ground. Unfortunately, needs to misguided policies. So the focus on the African perspective is so critical. So I want to thank our panelists for enriching our understanding today. Part of taking an on the ground perspective is realizing that every African country will have a relationship with China. After all, China is the second largest economy in the world and a very assertive fear. So we have heard today that China is increasing its influence on the continent. So how do we work to see that China presence is more constructive than destructive? I think one of the missing links in this conversation during focus was the effective and inclusive governance as a key driver for security. Liz, in her remark this morning, mentioned the series of coup d'etat. And Professor Gadi also raised the issue of security in your remarks as my brother Abu Hakim. So in fact, the series of coup d'etat and the turmoil that has ensured in some countries are a potent reminder that effective and inclusive governance matter to peace and stability. The center of gravity of peaceful and safe Africa lies in government's ability to govern effectively and deliver on citizen expectations for livelihoods, rights, and freedom. So effective and inclusive governance as a key driver of security must be of ultimate priority and importance. But for China, this poses a serious dilemma. How to stay true to the non-interference policy while supporting effective inclusive governance in every country, right, in Africa? So the governance challenge and China's role or non-intervention lead to what I will consider a visual cycle for African countries. And as Professor Gadi mentioned, you touch on the visual circle of security. But I look at it as from a governor's lens, because in fact that visual circle you mentioned derived from a mechanistic approach that China has taken, some may call it transactional, because in a situation of a fragile state, country with poor governance, leaders will look to China for their political survival. So China engagement in this case made them perpetuate poor governance as authoritarian leaders and elite in these countries find in China a reliable source of aid and foreign direct investment. And as you mentioned, an underwriter of the political survival strategy. So the unconditional money from China weakens the impetus for necessary government reform efforts. This in turn contains an added hit for proxy war between China and other foreign countries in the scramble for resource and influence, resulting in further destabilization of fragile state, particularly those bordering in this case, the Gulf of Guinea or the Gulf of Eden in this case as well. So I think the visual cycle you mentioned, and we have discussed here whether from a cyber security or economy is the number one challenge in China relationship with African countries. I may go in on considering other examples such as Ethiopia now, where we see a great deal, a great deal is at stake for Ethiopia, for Ethiopia, but also for China, where China has invested billions in Ethiopia. But China has also side the stage firstly with the government of Ethiopia, while the US has increased the pressure and trying to bring parties together. So the African Union and Africa countries that are trying to end this conflict should have different expectations of China. The EU should expect of China that it uses its influence to bring responsible parties together. So we must not forget that Africa's only one to see the US acting to score points against China in Africa, but they don't also want to see China acting to score points against the US in Africa either. Conversation like the one we are having now, I hope, will help avoid the looming danger of zero some game between major powers that may end up doing more harm to the security of Africa and Africans. So I want to leave it here by again thanking our panelists for the enlightening remarks and also to our audience for the questions. Over to you, Eda. All right, thank you. This concludes our discussion today. Please feel free to go on Twitter and use the hashtag that Lee's mentioned earlier during the discussion. And we look forward to holding many more discussions in the future, addressing similar topics. Thank you, everyone. Thank you very much.