The Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and knowledge transfer in Sino-Nigerian development cooperation

Introduction

Countries have resources, expertise or technology that, if shared, can result in mutual benefit. Working together is not just a moral obligation to help those less fortunate but is an investment in the long-term prosperity of all. (High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda [HLP], 2013)

The above quotation will drive the discourse in this research. The rapid multipolarization of growth and development whereby old and new sources as well as models of growth now coexist with alike capacity for transformational change has increasingly caught the attention of developing nations intent on exploring the accumulated development experiences, in making informed and context-specific choices on development reform. In this regard, Nigeria and China are not exceptions. Once an emerging economic power, China had embraced resource- and market-endowed Nigeria while furthering its national interests, which some argued were primarily economically driven at that stage. The country’s giant strides in the economic sphere suggested its strategic outlook was primarily for markets and raw materials (Kwanashie, 2007: 3). Now one of the world’s leading economic powerhouses, China is more focused on the reinforcement and consolidation of its record growth and development, scaling back its commodity-based production that once readily consumed raw materials for its emerging innovation-based production system, towards a services-based and full-fledged knowledge economy by 2020. Nigeria on the other hand, a mono-cultured economy dependent on oil as the dominant source of its revenue, seeks to also shed its dependence on commodity business and become a global economic player by 2020, of course with the technological and human capacity to drive industrialization at home and extend the transformation region-wide. The country hopes to leverage its considerable share of African human capital producing radical innovations that are disrupting traditional markets, and addressing broad socio-economic challenges, sometimes without science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) education (Ibonye, 2017: 171–172), in leapfrogging its current development path. However, the national knowledge base necessary to galvanize industrialization towards a knowledge-driven economy, as quickly as possible, is deficient at this time. This not only presents a huge ‘knowledge divide’, research development gap and development divide between Nigeria and ‘young lung’ ¹ but also implies, in the learning context, that the policies and practices employed by the latter in its remarkably successful government-led and development-oriented reforms are significant to the former.

Nigeria–China relations, no doubt, have endured across both military and civilian administrations between 1970 and 2016 in ways beneficial to both countries based on fundamental principles of mutual respect, non-interference in internal affairs, preservation of sovereignty and independence, non-aggression and peaceful coexistence. Since the 21st century, when China emerged as a major economic power in the world on the back of its advanced knowledge production, the need of both countries to strengthen ties has heightened. China’s recent engagement gained impetus in the context of its going out policy from 1998 onwards, increasingly linking its domestic socio-economic priorities to its global strategic aspirations as a ‘soft power’. At first, this implied the search for more resources, including raw materials and energy, and investments to feed its domestic economic production and markets for its products. It also implied more diplomacy abroad on the part of the Chinese in order to access these resources, investments and markets. More recently, using development partnership, South–South cooperation, mutual benefits and other rhetoric as launching pads, China’s traditional offering of trade and investment incentives, low interest loans, etc. has expanded to include development assistance in form of sensitive data or strategic information exchange, human resource development and technical and pro-innovation cooperation. To be sure, the promotion of common development through co-prosperity with developing countries as reliable friends and sincere partners is part of the cornerstone of Chinese foreign policy (Kejin, 2013). In line with China’s determination to rejuvenate international development cooperation and raise the levels of global development (Ndubueze, 2016: 51), particularly in African sectors where international assistance from traditional donors had ceased, China has preferred to deal with the African Development Bank, as opposed to Bretton Woods institutions, in investing heavily in the training of African professionals (Alli, 2018: 41). In this sense, China distinguishes itself as a partner not only willing to support Africa in areas that Western aid agencies and private investors tend to ignore, but also to constructively exploit its talent/population base for the science-led development of the continent in general and Nigeria in particular. A closer examination of Nigeria–China relations under the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) further underscores the point being made.

Since its establishment in October 2000, FOCAC has been gradually institutionalized and has become an important platform for collective dialogue and an effective mechanism for enhancing practical cooperation between China and African countries; it presents a successful example of South–South cooperation. With a focus on practical, realist and achievable objectives with a common development agenda, FOCAC seems a more robust mechanism, as Beijing’s approach is to plan together, asking what the other side wants and what they can do together. On this basis, it is assumed that Nigeria negotiates with China as equals, seeking mutually beneficial outcomes. Implying that the pursuit of capacity development vis-a-vis people-to-people exchanges is aimed at building both human and institutional resources for sustainable development, at the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), President Xi Jinping stated that ‘Africa is expected to play a major role in and benefit from China’s new era which offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence’ (Xi, 2017). Nigeria has welcomed China’s FOCAC commitments in knowledge transfer, seemingly a game-changer to its traditional dependency on former colonial Western donors, as an alternative source of development assistance. Discussion of studies on FOCAC priorities, strategies and fallouts vis-a-vis other South–South-based initiatives is beyond the scope of this article. Yet the article attempts to compare and match the letters of FOCAC commitment with actual actions on the ground, not only recognizing that the absence of comprehensive data and analysis of China’s relations/aid on transformative knowledge to Nigeria ² is a top priority for future knowledge transfer diplomacy and international aid research, but also mitigating this limitation with a deductive analysis of China’s wider aid package to Africa to make possible a focus on the Sino-Nigerian knowledge-centric assistance under scrutiny. Apparently, this analytical approach not only conforms to the premise ‘the method of presentation must differ in form from that of enquiry’ (Marx, 1970: 19), but also meaningfully justifies reporting findings in order to provide hypotheses for both subsequent comparative and large-scale studies.

Knowledge sharing as a developmental instrument in South–South cooperation

In the ever-evolving development landscape, the inflexibility of options for development cooperation towards facilitating national growth and development as defined by traditional sources of growth has increasingly been contested since the emergence of a progressively diverse group of actors with corresponding capacity for investment and mutual assistance. In this regard, the juxtaposition of multipolar growth with decades of official development assistance seemingly bearing emasculatory policies that in many cases give rise to contradictory, if not counterproductive, results in the developing world (Ehizuelen, 2014: 34) has seen experts increasingly call into question traditional development assistance – whether finance, technical cooperation or otherwise – provided mostly through North–South cooperation. After many decades of the shortcomings of North–South development cooperation, governments saddled with the task of advancing economic welfare, national wealth and development exhibit huge interest not only in identifying but also exploring new models of development cooperation for those which would result in the greatest impact domestically. In this pursuit, South–South cooperation, which refers to the exchange of knowledge, technology and other resources among developing nations and essentially the basis of their political and economic relations (Hamel, 2015: 6), has increasingly surfaced as a significantly reliable source of bilateral and multilateral technical cooperation and development knowledge transfer, in many cases also accompanied by a significant transfer of financial resources. In short, the world is increasingly coming to terms with the fact that fresh and innovative approaches to development cooperation are emerging as options to the much vaunted ‘one size fits all’ approach to development.

In view of the above, it is worth noting that the diverse supply of knowledge and development experiences flowing from new sources of growth in the global economy invariably translate as invaluable opportunities for developing countries to learn from their development experiences as well as maximize resources, capacities and knowledge towards scaling their respective development hurdles and actualizing transformational change. With growing awareness that the knowledge on what works, where and why to trigger growth, create wealth and galvanize national development may be available in the Global South, the corresponding attention paid to knowledge flows from the South (Lawan, 2016) not only mirrors the growing interest among many ‘efficiency- and factor-driven’ ³ countries to share their accumulated development experiences but also possibly signals the propensity for a shift from the traditional demand for North–South knowledge flows and assistance by extension.

In itself, knowledge sharing, the human activity that involves the transfer of data, skills, expertise, etc., is not restricted to information sharing, given that it involves the voluntary or wilful exchange of relevant ideas and experiences including technologies (Gonondo, 2017: 17–18). It refers to mutual conversations and learning processes through the mainstreaming of experiences towards tangible knowledge-sharing results. In other words, whether via transfer or acquisition, knowledge sharing encompasses its absorption, adaptation and application, and is typically a two-way exchange benefiting all parties involved (Ipe, 2003: 344; Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2011, Lam, 2000). Worth distinguishing here is bilateral and multilateral knowledge sharing. The former occurs when countries exchange their respective experiences, often through government-to-government cooperation programmes, while the latter comes about when several countries engage in a mutual, peer-to-peer exchange of experiences and practices, often facilitated by international organizations (Kampmann and Martinez, 2015: 6). Mindful of the ‘1 + 54’ framework as a bilateral and multilateral hybrid, our analysis straddles bilateral and multilateral knowledge sharing. Of importance to this study, and in light of questions about how joint learning processes enhance the analysis and insight of developmental conditions, opportunities and challenges in order to draw and adapt relevant lessons, is its presupposition about its premium in strengthening the bases for endogenous capacity development through mutually beneficial learning. It shores up the capacity of countries to take ownership of their development process as the mutual, peer-to-peer exchange of their experiences and practices not only brings back local agency, but also improves and nurtures the enabling environment necessary for formulating and implementing difficult development reforms. Indeed, the G20 decision to elevate knowledge sharing as one of the nine pillars of the Seoul Multi-Year Action Plan adopted in 2011 (G20 Information Centre, 2010: 10) is directly linked to knowledge emerging as not only a new key driver of growth but also a progressively significant input to any process of development.

Therefore, in international cooperation in today’s global system characterised by multipolar growth, it is understood that new actors engaged in supporting global prosperity and development are also generating a varied stock of development experiences for which there is growing demand. With knowledge sharing now established, exchanging new ideas, philosophies, approaches, etc. extends beyond codified data to include practical experiences of the how-to of development reform wherein direct, peer-to-peer communication of difficult-to-codify information is invaluable. This is particularly valid for South–South cooperation and Sino–African cooperation in particular where, according to Liu (2015), the cross-cutting renaissance of countries in the partnership rests less on economic growth or the revival of their respective civilizations and more on knowledge reconstruction and ideas improvement in particular. In a record-setting three decades, China was able to obtain socio-economic institutions and technologies from advanced countries, promote domestic research and development (R&D) and industrialize cost effectively and fairly risk free (Ehizuelen, 2014: 34) into becoming the global economic powerhouse it is today. In the process, it became the first developing country to offer non-conditional international aid adapted to local standards of living; honouring commitments using premium resources which promote knowledge transfer in the training of local labour, achieve fast results and ultimately increase self-sufficiency (Vieira, 2019: 532, 538). Vieira asserts that Chinese ‘quaternity’ aid, as this model is termed, combines aid, trade and investment, but also includes in its modalities the provision of technical services and specialized Chinese labour to build the self-reliance of recipient countries. Noting this mix with technical assistance, whether from Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) or workforces, seemingly often leads to practical results among which is boosting the recipient’s international competitiveness, he observes that novel programmes like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) also further Chinese ‘quaternity’ international aid (Vieira, 2019: 540). Accordingly, Inada cites Western scholars such as Bräutigam who argues that the model yields invaluable returns, and Moyo who contends it spurs critical growth, to help explain why the approach seems a more effective form of aid for the developing world as opposed to the traditional Western standard of humanitarianism (Inada, 2013: 108).

In light of the discourse above, contentions on China’s export of surplus specialized labour, limited engagement of locals and negligible offering of training to those engaged, much to the undermining of the recipient country’s development (Inada, 2013; Vieira, 2019), remain a subject for debate; for how can Nigeria leverage China’s export of knowledge, the so called invisible goods, in boosting its comparative advantage and building an industrial economy without taking full advantage of opportunities presented for knowledge transmission? Reminded that both countries once shared parallel challenges, what counts, therefore, is increased localization so as to improve domestic agency to adapt relevant solutions and effectively channel development knowledge assistance. In all, Nigeria and China can sustain extended cooperation in knowledge exchange and collaborate in tackling the constraints to technical cooperation being prioritized not only as an area of mutual interest but also an added pivot of their development relations.

Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) I-VI: Mapping knowledge sharing plans

From a historical perspective, FOCAC should be seen as a continuum of the spirit of the Bandung Conference held in Indonesia in 1955 whose participant nations identified with their shared history and perception of Western dominance. Today, the Bandung spirit finds relevance as one of the central pillars informing China’s foreign policy engagements with the developing world, and indeed Africa–China relations. Regarding this, FOCAC acts as the primary platform where dialogue and consultation on bilateral, multilateral and triangular cooperation amid parties is forged. As the operating mechanism for promoting economic, political and diplomatic relations between China and African countries, FOCAC provides the integrated framework governing the Sino-African relationship, buttressing and institutionalizing support for trade, investment and aid cooperation between country and continent. Besides political and socio-economic programmes piloted at these fora, the mutual sharing of knowledge has emerged as an important area of focus, even yielding knowledge-based aid or projects. The majority that were officially pledged, committed, in implementation and completed between 2000 and 2015 across Africa are captured below:

    We decide to vigorously promote further China–Africa co-operation in the […] scientific and technological, […] educational, human resources development, […] areas on the basis of the principles enshrined in this declaration and the Program for China–Africa Co-operation in economic and social Development adopted at the Forum so as to promote the common development of China and Africa. (FOCAC, 2000)

   Most noteworthy of the above Declaration is its emergence at a time when Africa was witnessing a new commitment to poverty reduction and economic development. Following the First Ministerial Conference, measures taken in the area of knowledge-based friendship include, among others, the setting up of the African Human Resources Development Fund (AHRDF) for personnel training; scholarships for Africans to study in China; posting of Chinese teachers to Africa in the assistance of indigenous institutions; institution of mutual study channels between African and Chinese universities (FOCAC, 2000), to include sponsoring of nearly 300 training courses and training of nearly 7000 African professionals in diplomacy, economic management, national defence, agriculture, education, science and technology, culture and health. Africa demonstrated its commitment to these commitments with the adoption of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) as its developmental blueprint in 2002.

In testament to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s statement in 2010 that human resources are more valuable than gold (Reilly, 2015), the foregoing shows the primacy of human capital in Chinese knowledge assistance to Africa and why its study ought to revolve around people-to-people erudition and experience communication. Also, it indicates that the lack of cumulative data on Chinese aid in development know-how to Nigeria earlier noted is due to it mostly bound with the bulk of China–Africa bilateral and multilateral cooperation. Thus, analysis follows of Sino-Nigerian knowledge cooperation as part of the wider Pan-African scale of Chinese development aid agreed to at various FOCAC summits and ministerial conferences/meetings, including conferences for ministers of education of various African countries, starting with their relationship before the advent of FOCAC before delving into the subject of the instrumentalization of strategic knowledge in their cooperation under the Forum.

Nigeria and China in the pre-FOCAC era: Whither knowledge relations?

The establishment of formal diplomatic ties between the two countries in 1971 was followed by the first visit to China of a Nigerian head of state, General Yakubu Gowon in 1974 (Bukarambe, 2005: 233–234). Within this period, then Nigerian Commissioner for Economic Development Professor Adebayo Adedeji led a six-person delegation on a visit to Beijing resulting in an agreement on economic and technical cooperation as well as agreement on trade between both countries. Thereafter, Chinese manufacturing and export capacity increased, and between 1978 and 1979, under General Olusegun Obasanjo, high-level interactions were conducted between the two countries to address a developing trade imbalance that arose, although they had little to no effect in reversing the trade disparity (Ogunsanwo, 2008: 194). Instead, these meetings resulted in China’s provision of a limited aid package, including personnel with medical and agricultural expertise to assist Nigeria in tackling its developmental challenges. From the 1980s to early 1990s, trade volume between Nigeria and China continued to advance at a slow pace up till the point of China’s transition in 1993 from a net exporter of crude oil to the second-largest importer of crude oil in the world. China secured various joint-venture contracts with Nigerian oil companies, often in exchange for loans bearing the lowest interest rates and targeted development projects. This period of good economic ties was characterized by good diplomatic ties as well, with Nigeria’s support for the ‘One China, Two Systems’ policy and China’s repossession of Hong Kong. China repeatedly held numerous joint-venture contracts with Nigerian oil companies in return for low-interest loans and projects intended for development; and on the other hand, levels of trade in Nigeria started to climb owing largely to the oil sector and slightly to the cheap imports from the Chinese (Utomi, 2008: 40).

Under General Sani Abacha, the need for alternative sources of foreign inflows following international criticism and isolation on account of perceptions that the country held a poor human rights record, an experience common to China (Ogunsanwo, 2008: 200), prompted Abuja to engage Beijing with a fervour and vigour. By 1994, the Nigerian–Chinese Chamber of Commerce was founded (Mthembu-Salter, 2009: 6); in 1995, the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) secured a contract worth US$529 million for the rehabilitation of Nigeria’s railway system (Bukarambe, 2005: 251); in 1997, the former premier of China’s State Council, Li Ping, paid the highest level visit ever witnessed by Nigeria in that period, which included both countries entering into agreements on protection and cooperation in electricity generation, steel production and the oil industry (Utomi, 2008: 40). The agreements made with Li Ping suffered from the lack of will to carry out their proper implementation. But, after the return of Nigeria to civilian rule after many years of military dictatorship, Nigeria–China relations not only picked up tempo, but also witnessed the vigorous entry of both Chinese nationals as well as businesses backed by government support into the Nigerian environment. On the whole, it is observed that prior to the establishment of FOCAC, knowledge-based and knowledge-intensive cooperation between Nigeria and China were too few and far between such that any agreements reached thereof were hardly meaningful with marginal impact.

Enter FOCAC: Sino-Nigerian cooperation in knowledge transfer

The introduction of FOCAC in 2000 coincided with Nigeria’s return to democratic rule and embrace by the international community. High-level policymakers from Nigeria attended the first ministerial conference held in Beijing and by 2005 Nigeria–China affairs transcended to a ‘strategic partnership’ ⁴ anchored on a mutual relationship on trade, goods and technology transfer, and development cooperation. From observation, Nigeria–China knowledge assistance relations cover various pathways to the transmission of knowledge, such as targeted scholarships, training and volunteer programmes and specified project-related training; provision of advanced applications and equipment, advanced educational institutions cooperation and joint research exchanges and projects; and together they emanate from, if not studied as part of, China’s full implementation package to Africa. The core modalities thereof are subsumed under the wider platform of the Africa–China didactic policy regime built through various summits, ministerial conferences including meetings for ministers of education of various African countries, among other FOCAC fora. Basically, aside from individual country requests, Nigeria–China relations in the knowledge domain pivot around a body of memorandums of understanding (MoUs) assented to at both the bilateral and multilateral levels whose returns for both sides are subject to their development needs vis-a-vis national interests and bargaining power. But these agreements are poorly disseminated to the extent that many Nigerians are unaware of the opportunities for technical assistance that exist, even within communities of experts and professionals (Oyewopo, 2018: 296).

As a nation increasingly aware of the value of knowledge in growth and national development, Nigeria is an active participant in key deliberations on the subject. An example would be the high-level round-table on higher education for science and innovation that was held in Kigali, Rwanda, where stakeholders called for a bold target of doubling-up the number of Africans studying within the field before 2025, towards fulfilling the dream of a knowledge-driven continent in no more than two decades (Ubi, 2015: 142–143). Goal no. 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), i.e. quality education, is wholly subscribed to by Nigeria in terms of its role in the trajectory of global development. Nigeria’s President, alongside other African Heads of State, developed a Common African Position (CAP) on this aspect of the post-2015 Development Agenda (summarized as the need to redouble support for R&D; boost technological capacities; and, more notably, address a plethora of demographic challenges such as surging youth populations which overburden knowledge services across the board) which China has factored into its guidebook on knowledge cooperation with Nigeria (Ubi and Ibonye, 2017: 30–31).

As a matter of fact, knowledge sharing only began to assume priority status in Africa–China relations based on the growing awareness of its immense proclivity to precipitate sustainable growth and development (even via triangular cooperation) under the FOCAC framework. As a result, there is a dearth of data on mutual aid in the domain, particularly from the Nigerian side. Whatever records are available are incorporated within data made available by either the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Information Office of the People’s Republic of China on the cumulative bulk of regional or continental assistance earlier mentioned. That being said, Istvan Tarrosy, Associate Professor in African Studies and Director, Africa Research Centre, University of Pécs, Hungary, seizes upon a string of publications available in the Chinese language at repositories such as the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, the University of Lagos and Obafemi Awolowo University to uphold the existence of Chinese scholars in Nigerian academic institutions (Bothwell, 2016). In any case, the establishment of Nigerian centres at Chinese universities which include, among others, the Centre for Nigerian Studies at Zhejiang Normal University, under Nigerian Director Dr Michael Mitchell Omoruyi Ehizuelen, will hopefully result in an increase not only in the amount of Chinese research on Nigeria but also in the number of young Chinese scholars working on short- and long-term research projects in the country.

Reflecting on China’s provision of skills-based and knowledge-intensive foreign assistance, typologies such as ‘education’, ‘training’, ‘technical cooperation’ and ‘human resource development cooperation’ significantly recur in the 2011 State Council White Paper on China’s Foreign Aid, as well as cooperation in human capacity-building mentioned in the 2013 White Paper on China–Africa Economic and Trade Cooperation. This goes to show not only that human capital development is possibly the most prioritized feature but also that ‘human resources development and educational cooperation with Africa’ are observable virtually as an individual concept (Ubi and Ibonye, 2017: 34) – and this article understands this concept to form knowledge sharing.

Through collaboration in higher education, China exhibits some readiness to help improve human resource capacity in Nigeria. Country-to-country agreements and protocols on cooperation between institutions of higher learning in the two countries are of huge importance. From 24 Nigerian students studying in China from 2002 to 2003, the numbers swelled to 2979 by 2014 alone, out of which 251 students received Chinese government scholarships (Bakare, 2016). Clearly the policy regimes mentioned have greatly enriched educational collaboration between the two countries. While in times past, China awarded 100 government scholarships every year to Nigerians to study in China, the number increased to 700 students annually following President Muhammadu Buhari’s trip to China in April 2016 (Aderinokun and Soniyi, 2016). In the same year, under the Nigeria–China Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) which offers Chinese government post-graduate scholarships to Nigerians through the Federal Scholarship Board annually, 24 Nigerian students were awarded scholarships. Besides government-to-government arrangements, no fewer than 400 Nigerians are self-funded students in various Chinese universities. The scale-up in the number of scholarships awarded to Nigerians is a testament to the considerably self-reinforcing nature of people-to-people-related knowledge exchanges between both countries.

With the successes recorded, presently a number of Chinese academic institutions have established partnerships with their counterparts in Nigeria in the hope of expanding cooperation between their paired institutions into a comprehensive and multifaceted partnership, even as they beget a rather undefined quota of knowledge-centric goods and resources from China’s Ministry of Education. Here, the establishment of a Confucius Institute in conjunction with the Beijing Institute of Technology at the University of Lagos on 16 October 2009, subsequently followed by others such as that instituted at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, readily comes to mind. Recent reports indicate that students from Nnamdi Azikiwe University comprise 90 percent of Nigerian students presently studying in China, with no less than 64 awarded government scholarships to study Chinese programmes in different institutions around China (Elekwa, 2017a, 2017b). Juxtaposing Nigerians being exposed to the Mandarin language to enhance individual competitive advantage with Wen’s (2013) analysis of a Mandarin instructor’s positive change of perception about Nigeria having experienced the country first hand presents far-reaching mutual results of intercultural idea reconstruction, under established Confucius Institutes (CIs) and Confucius Classrooms (CCs). These have been very fruitful not only in unifying government officials, technical experts, professionals and specialized post-graduate students from the two countries, but also in the provision or acquisition of requisite logistics and instructional resources. To add, progeny such as the China–Africa People to People Friendship Action have situated friendship schools with a number of Chinese instructors in 300 Nigerian villages.

Worthy of note is the China–Africa Joint Research and Exchange Program. High-level collaborations between academic institutions under the China–Africa Think Tanks Forum (CATTF) launched by the Chinese government through the Zhejiang Normal University in 2011 present a shared platform for discourse and idea exchanges between African and Chinese think tanks and universities (Ubi and Ibonye, 2017: 37–38). What is more, since CATTF’s establishment, over 100 think tanks, scholars, policymakers, representatives from the press, etc. from China, Nigeria and other African countries have participated in the high-level dialogue that has become an important platform for knowledge cooperation. CATTF birthed the 10+10 Partnership Plan that is managed by the Chinese Follow-up Committee of FOCAC for idea exchanges and intellectual collaborations between African and Chinese think tanks (Ubi and Ibonye, 2017: 37–38), a framework that institutions on both sides leverage in sharing knowledge. Adding to the body of MoUs both existing and under negotiation, November 2013 witnessed an agreement reached between the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) and the Institute of African Studies at Zhejiang Normal University (IASZNU) on a range of joint ventures including, among others, joint research and projects, scholar and codified exchanges, joint forums and publications, etc. On the same note, the NIIA and the China Institute for Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) have collaborated since the MoU signed by them in 2009. However, while IAS and the China–Africa International Business School (CAIBS) at ZNU subsist as the Forum’s standing secretariat, Nigeria is yet to establish a counterpart platform to drive the cooperation agenda towards preferences and objectives that align with the country’s national interests (Oyewopo, 2018: 301).

Acknowledging the critical role of human resources in steering Africa on its development path, the Africa Union (AU) released a working document titled ‘Strategy to Revitalize Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Africa’, assented to at the 2007 Conference of Ministers of Education of the African Union (COMEDAF II+) in Addis Ababa, which affirmed the limitless potential of TVET programmes to boost continental growth provided that factors such as streamlined delivery systems and good quality training were made available (Ubi and Ibonye, 2017: 38–39). Addressing the surging population of young Africans in the extra-formal education system, the document not only proposed the integration of non-formal learning methodologies and literacy programmes into national TVET programmes and the creation of national frameworks to manage them, but also signposted the introduction of technical and vocational programmes for managerial and technical personnel of various professions (Ubi and Ibonye, 2017: 38–39). FOCAC itself prioritizes human resources development in terms of technical and vocational education and training (TVET), hence it is no surprise that trainings have become a major activity for a host of Chinese institutions. Participants in these short- or long-term trainings are typically African policymakers, government officials and specialists selected by the Chinese embassy in consultation with the host country. Nigerian government officials and experts from various strata attend these trainings in China annually. While the entirety of trainees remains unspecified, President Buhari’s recent visit to China occasioned the country’s pledge of vocational and technical trainings for 1000 Nigerians annually (Aderinokun and Soniyi, 2016).

Assenting to a MoU in 2015 specifying that two Chinese instructors be seconded to the Nigerian Navy, the Chinese government agreed to train Nigerian naval officers and related personnel to improve their operational capability (Baba-Yesufu, 2015). Similarly, the same year, Abuja and Beijing reached an agreement, under Huawei’s Seeds for the Future programme, on the training of 2000 Nigerian youths in ICT at Huawei Technologies Company, Nigeria, Ltd., for eventual absorption by the company (Nwabughiogu, 2015). Showcasing their mutual commitment, June 2016 witnessed the Nigerian and Chinese governments run a pioneer agricultural technical training programme for 40 members of staff of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, locally. Conducted to boost the knowledge and skills of Nigerian agricultural experts in their competencies and productivity in the sector, the exercise dealt with seed production and inspection, soil and fertilizer management, rice and vegetable cultivation, as well as agricultural machinery operations ( Xinhua News, 2016).

Furthermore, considerable support through knowledge sharing and training has come Nigeria’s way following a number of agreements with Chinese technology firms. For instance, in 2005, the China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) was awarded the fabrication and in-orbit delivery of the NigComSat-1. A first of its kind for both Nigeria and China, provisos of the contract worth US$311 million included personnel training for Nigerian experts involved (Bergin, 2007). Suggestively, the crescendo has been sustained, considering that Huawei Technologies established a US$10 million Technology Support Centre and Training Centre for Western Africa in Abuja (Huawei, 2006). In 2013, the federal government reached an agreement with Sanshui District Bureau of Economy, Science and Technology Development Promotion on the sharing of technical skills and technologies between industrial units located in the Sanshui Economic Development Zones (EDZs) and Nigeria (Nwokpoku et al., 2013). More recently, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Science and Technology joined forces with China’s Huawei on the construction of a National Information Communication Technology Infrastructure Backbone for Nigeria. Moreover, while in China in 2016, President Buhari assented to a US$1 billion facility agreement for the establishment of a hi-tech industrial park in the Ogun-Guangdong Free Trade Zone in Igbesa, Ogun state (Adetayo, 2016). The year 2017 saw China’s Ministry of Commerce, the Shenzhen Association for Promoting International Economic and Technological Cooperation and Huawei Nigeria introduce a first of its kind bilateral training course in the area of telecommunication technologies for Nigerians to be taught in Nigeria (Isaac, 2017).

Additionally, Huawei President Ren Zhengfei, accompanying then-Chinese Foreign Minister Wu Bangguo on a diplomatic tour of African nations in November 2000, lay the groundwork for one of the company’s biggest deals – a US$200 million contract to build a CDMA 450 network in Nigeria, awarded in 2005 (Wen, 2017: 117). More recently, in a move to raise the country’s position on the global value chain, the Nigerian delegation to the FOCAC follow-up/coordination meeting in Beijing, led by Minister of Budget and National Planning Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, met with the management team of EXIM Bank of China, led by its Vice President, Yuan Xingyong, on bridging the financing gap in the execution of priority projects that include the Galaxy Backbone project and the Export Processing Zones (EPZs). The aim was to attract companies wishing to base in Nigeria and manufacture principally for exports (Daniel, 2016; FMIC, 2016; Pingjian, 2016).

On the whole, the Chinese initiative is pronounced in mutual learning activities with Nigeria. Regarding this, it is observed that the collaboration is driven mostly by the strategic interests of the Chinese side employing ‘soft power concepts’ in knowledge assistance to Nigeria. In contrast, Nigeria has been unable to maximize China’s extended hand of friendly opportunities to project, for instance, its Technical Aid Corps (TAC) programme, which many African countries benefit from, to China (Oyewopo, 2018: 297). Even so, critically assessing FOCAC priorities for development knowledge transfer, can it be rightly argued that it has served relatively well as a giant lobbying forum to discuss and sign contracts based on mutual ‘sincerity, real results, affinity and good faith’ ( China Daily, 2019) between Nigeria and China? Addressing this question, we are reminded that the Forum’s pledges are in close association with MoUs signed and agreed upon at the multilateral and bilateral levels and, therefore, achieving practical results not only rests on China fulfilling its promises and Nigeria holding the country to them but also primarily depends on the latter’s ability to bargain for priorities to suit its national interests. The point at issue is that grasping the actual picture of China’s knowledge assistance to Nigeria goes beyond interrogating the discharge of FOCAC commitments, particularly to how strategic the latter is in setting related modalities, negotiating terms of reference (ToRs), etc. with the Chinese.

Select problems and challenges

Essential to international cooperation is complementarity, evoking reciprocal or interdependent impressions and as a result translating possible synergies and mutual learning into opportunities to capture partners’ complementarities. Knowledge sharing in Africa–China cooperation has witnessed conflicting positions, from the pessimists who question China’s sincerity in allowing Africa to exploit specific complementarities for boosting continental industrialization and foretell a colossal loss for the continent in the long run if the status quo remains, to the optimists who have faith in China’s supposed respect for and adherence to the principle of complementarity in partnerships. According to Yin and Vaschetto (2011), it would be idealistic to expect China to share knowledge sufficient enough to galvanize Africa’s development. On the contrary, advocates believe the country to be engendering a win-win knowledge transfer. Putting forward a more nuanced position based on the prospect of shared knowledge to impact industrial capacity, Brautigam and Xiaoyang (2011) argue that the onus lies on Africa to seize the initiative in accessing relevant knowledge and experiences.

China’s pledge to train the local workforce under programmes administered by skilled Chinese, in order to enhance capacity building and technology know-how, has seen Chinese workers reside in receiving countries for periods beyond necessary for the execution of programmes and increasingly take up positions at the expense of local people. In 2017, the Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria, Zhou Pingjian, placed Chinese people residing in Nigeria at approximately 40,000 to 50,000 (Aidoghie, 2017). Although these numbers might have played a contributing role in Nigeria’s developmental pursuits, Chinese-led ventures offer fewer transfers of skills and capabilities to the local population. Gabdo (2018: 203–204) cites Chen et al.’s (2016) highlight of the Baoyao steel mill in Calabar, Nigeria, where advanced specialists required for training are hardly robustly sourced, to argue that evidence of systematic skills transfer and Chinese assistance in industrial upgrading is very low. A perusal of the Nigerian scenario shows that Chinese knowledge assistance has led to situations where the number of personnel brought in from China for trainings and knowledge transfer is growing, alongside a gradually mounting caution of an excessive number of Chinese. Despite some progress made through aid in the form of Chinese specialized labour inflows, there is increasing suspicion towards growing Chinese presence which does not lead to much knowledge transfer. In some respects, this picture evokes Japan’s excessive transfer of labour to Southeast Asia in the 1970s, though it might be better understood in terms of China’s status as a developing country with an abundance of low-wage workers seeking job opportunities (Inada, 2013: 106–107).

Africans are known to engage in collaborations with the Chinese largely to acquire the requisite knowledge (Ado and Su, 2015). However, for this to be possible, the Chinese must be sincere in willing to share their knowledge. In a learning context, substantial evidence exists to prove that benign conduct is not only crucial to learning but also often a factor in boosting trust and collaborative communication (Chrysotome and Su, 2002; Harrigan, 1986). However, some Africans have alleged that the Chinese knowingly place difficult hurdles to optimal learning where the knowledge at stake is of higher added value or strategic such as innovation and R&D activities, to the extent that their behavioural differentiations and contradictory attitudes have precluded African acquisition of relevant knowledge. It is believed that the Chinese have time and again come off as opportunistic and disobliging in sharing knowledge, even exploiting circumstances by making it difficult for Africans to benefit from their knowledge stock (Ado and Su, 2015). Examples range from the customization of knowledge management practices to act as language barriers to other modifications which are specificity-related, to include disregard for absence of any prior knowledge or experience on a subject (Ado and Su, 2015). Even in the review of knowledge-sharing agreements, the Chinese seem well versed in influencing top decision-making spheres such that lower-level officials have little room to modify, let alone renegotiate, MoUs when they go through their offices. Altogether, the control strategies of the Chinese may be understandable from a strategic viewpoint, yet they fuel controversy as to whether China’s knowledge sharing plans with Africa are cosmetic or if they indeed promise tangible results.

For all it hopes to actualize, FOCAC itself is not exactly a bilateral or multilateral cooperative forum. Regarding this, the FOCAC process – an elaborate mechanism of formal engagement between China and individual African states (1+54) varied in regime-type, economic structure, developmental paradigms and priorities, levels of development and developmental strategy, world view, perspectives on the Sino-Africa partnership, etc. – poses huge questions for uniformity in the objectives and requirements of both sides. Regarding this, for all the efforts taken by Beijing granting African states relative access to its knowledge and development experiences, the Forum’s struggle to bring some uniformity to the said assistance yet have to contend with challenges of internal disaggregation in Nigeria’s formal structure. In that sense, joint learning activities birthed on the margins of FOCAC and the agreements signed for technical cooperation cannot but far less serve the interests of Nigerian institutions, agencies and participants in general. Despite efforts to ensure parity or symmetry in Sino-Nigerian cooperation, many knowledge-sharing activities occur in a one-way exchange. Regardless of considerable interest in even ‘tacit’ knowledge that Africa can offer China, data on knowledge flows from Nigeria to China in, for instance, aspects of culture are rare compared to the records on flows from China available from sources such as the Information Office of the PRC. Therefore, probity demands interrogating Nigeria’s capacity to share relevant knowledge.

A prognosis for action

Looking at China’s behavioural differentiation and contradictions which are not dismissible, we cannot but acknowledge that a systemic contradiction of any relationship between a major power and a lesser power is its typical skew in favour of the stronger power. The fact is that the measure of reciprocity between unequal powers is subject to the imbalance in their national power, with some disproportion in their bilateralism readily noticeable. The implication is that owing to the dominance of China’s economic exploits and the propensity of Chinese unprecedented capital and overall productivity, Nigeria should expect some distortion in its knowledge partnership with China – and the ‘strict equivalence of benefits’ (Koehane, 1986: 6) lacking in strategic knowledge and development know-how is one manifestation. In that stead, the onus is arguably on Nigeria to be more strategic about the said engagements. Nigeria must muster the political will to augment its investments in institutions with technical curricula in order to scale up the number of skilled locals available with the training and capacity to optimally absorb knowledge from joint learning activities with China. Regarding this, the country must ensure its people acquire the capacities or basic prerequisites to absorb or be compatible with the targeted or desired knowledge. In addition, Nigeria can set transformative laws dealing with its ‘brain drain’ by attracting its huge number of highly educated and technically skilled diaspora back home in a strategy of ‘brain gain’. Such laws should be followed up by others stipulating professional qualifications for Chinese professionals sent to Nigeria for skills and expertise transfer. Again, besides how crucial it is that Nigeria establishes a bold national R&D agenda for knowledge-based investments and development of local absorptive capacities, the country must set technical standards and insist that China fully complies with the standards back in its homeland, to ease both the transplanting of knowledge compatible with domestic specificities and the obtaining of more applicable knowledge for further utilization. In other words, Nigeria’s aims and objectives in joint learning ventures must be spelled out in detailed contract terms. On the aspect of negotiations, Nigeria can refer to consultants with expertise in partnership formation to identify other ways of capitalizing on opportunities it fails to notice. The country’s target of core skills or specific kind of knowledge does not preclude making the most of by-products of its bargaining and gaining wider expertise possibly beneficial in the long run. More importantly, Abuja should draw knowledge from Beijing’s strategies of lobbying not only in boosting its influence with China’s top decision-makers but also in scaling-up its bargaining muscle within FOCAC.

In FOCAC-administered knowledge cooperation, many Chinese partners with refined strategic knowledge are available. Therefore, Nigeria must target those possessing the industrial know-how on upgrading to higher value-adding sections of the global value chain. Regarding this, the country must pinpoint and prioritize administrative and technical knowledge needs, as well as bargaining for strategic learning ventures on the strengths of its domestic industrial goals, while giving precedence to trainings that underscore greater value added knowledge management. This will help Nigeria build a more globally competitive domestic economy, while engendering the sustainable development of its industrial base. Moreover, in conjunction with the Chinese, Nigeria needs to establish specialized training centres predicated on the country’s comparative advantages and development goals to coordinate joint learning processes, and to set up coordination structures to manage knowledge-sharing activities. In addition, China’s policies and strategies on knowledge partnership embody institutional and regulatory parameters honed from years of creating its own conditions in negotiations and dealings with the West, and hence offer models from which Nigeria can redesign and improve the laws and technical tools it employs in its development alliances with China, thereby overcoming challenges to optimally benefiting from them.

Conclusion

From the foregoing analysis, knowledge-based relations between Nigeria and China have witnessed gradual expansion since the inception, in 2000, of the Forum on China–Africa which has acted as a vehicle through which the wider gamut of Africa–China knowledge-based relations has been strengthened. As has been observed, FOCAC summits seemingly seek to replicate the legacy of China’s development experience which it is exporting to African countries. Much insight is drawn from China’s knowledge stock and applicable experiences towards promoting continental prosperity and development through mutual benefits. The relations between Nigeria and China primarily reflect South–South cooperation, which in particular represents win-win cooperation, as mirrored in the prominence of developmental imperatives derived from the capitalization on ‘people-to-people diplomacy’ in deepening the mutual exchange of information and ideas, skills and expertise, applicable technologies, etc. Although China presents many African countries at the receiving end of global power structures with alternatives to Western options for managing the pains of globalization, critics contest their purpose on grounds that they are clear strategies for the imposition of a paradigm of globalization that is solely favourable to Beijing. With sub-optimal knowledge and technology transfer, coupled with the general imbalance in benefits of development partnerships between China and individual African states, views that the relations tend to echo the dependency type of relationship with the Global North have grown. Whether true or imaginary, there are definite challenges and realities that raise important questions about Africa’s gains in FOCAC. The point here is that Africa’s look East is yet to considerably enhance the industrial capacity of many of its countries; in light of which, developing a strategic response is imperative for a country like Nigeria. Instead of the downsides of Nigeria–China cooperation in the knowledge sphere, attention ought to be focused on carefully identifying the type, selecting the source, planning the direction and determining the channel (the ‘which’, ‘from’, ‘where’ and ‘how’) of China’s knowledge flows to Nigeria. In that vein, the measures constituting our conclusion could facilitate improved collaborations and joint endeavours in knowledge-driven development cooperation between both sides.

With the growth in China’s knowledge-centric engagements in Africa, Nigeria is presented with a potential strategic ally that, if constructively handled, can provide critical development know-how and boost the global competitiveness of its domestic economy. Nigeria, therefore, must rethink and even renegotiate its knowledge-sharing plans with China to narrow gaps and loopholes exploitable by the Chinese, because hardly anyone truly willingly shares transformative knowledge. In any case, juxtaposing Chinese opportunism and contradictions with Nigerian strategic and institutional limitations, Abuja must take strategic steps in the pursuit of knowledge on development reform by creating new and suitable tools for effective negotiation and constructive exploitation of knowledge-based cooperation with China. These measures must be crafted with the specific knowledge sections targeted on the value chain in mind. In all, if properly executed through the FOCAC process, they would greatly improve Nigeria’s capacity to obtain, harness, produce and share sophisticated knowledge, as well as enhancing the country’s competitiveness, industrial capacity, placement on the global value chain, and ultimately sustaining national development. Only by fashioning such a systematic response can Nigeria turn FOCAC’s massive and multifaceted developmental drive in Africa to its sustainable best advantage.