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In 2020, Joshua Meservey wrote “China’s Palace Diplomacy in Africa,”where he argued that China maintains a competitive advantage in Africa and will continue its aggressive financial investment in African government infrastructure and cultivation of African leaders. In the wake of China’s announcement this month of additional multi-billion dollar investments, we invited Joshua back to reflect on his article.Read more below.In your 2020 article, “China’s Palace Diplomacy in Africa,” you argue that China maintains a competitive advantage in Africa and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future due to aggressive financial investment in African government infrastructure and cultivation of African leaders. How has Chinese investment in Africa evolved in the past four years? The most notable adjustment that China has made in its Africa engagement over the past four years has been its move away from large, long-term loans for infrastructure megaprojects toward smaller, more bankable projects with shorter time horizons. This so-called “small and beautiful” (sometimes also translated as “small or beautiful”) approach is likely the result of a wave of bad loans coming due from the continent, which is especially hard to bear given China’s current economic woes, as well as the reputational damage that comes from Chinese lenders being the largest bilateral creditors to the continent amid a growing debt crisis.Other less dramatic trends include Beijing’s growing focus on financing African green energy projects and its continued investment in critical mineral and other strategic metals projects. Several African governments have also demanded that companies perform some value addition to natural resources, including minerals, in the countries of extraction, and other African countries are likely to adopt similar approaches. Because Chinese companies are acquiring greater and greater stakes in mining ventures for certain specific minerals like cobalt and lithium, and are dominating the mining sectors in entire countries like