Global Security Initiative: Opportunities and Challenges for Africa
The Global Security Initiative (GSI) was proposed by His Excellency President Xi Jinping in 2022. It addresses traditional and modern security issues such as terrorism, climate change, cybersecurity, and biodiversity. It encourages dialogue instead of confrontation, partnerships instead of alliances and global security while preserving the sovereignty of countries. Since 2022, this initiative has already achieved many significant successes, including one that mediated the reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023, provided a 12-point political settlement plan on the crisis of Russia and Ukraine, and heavily contributed to the United Nations (UN) peacemaking budget. This initiative has the capacity to shape the future of the African region if managed properly by countries.
The African region has faced a lot of discrimination throughout history. This region has often been exploited by major powers. We have seen many examples of this discrimination, such as apartheid in South Africa (1948–1994) and human trafficking to America and Europe for the past 300 years. Africa is blessed with approximately 35% of the world’s mineral resources, including gold, uranium, oil, platinum, and cobalt. Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, and Angola are oil suppliers, while Congo supplies more than half of the world’s cobalt. The Africa region comprises 54 countries, making it a significant player in global politics. It is also important for global trade, as strategic locations such as the Suez Canal in Egypt and the Horn of Africa greatly influence the smooth flow of international trade. This part of the world has the world’s largest youth population around 62% which attracts the global market to invest. It has historically attracted major powers for competition, such as the USA trying to promote democracy and China improving infrastructure development through investment, and to build a community with a shared future through a win-win mindset.
The first opportunity for the African region by the GSI is that it will lead to peace and stability. The countries in the Saharan region (Sahel), such as Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Sudan, and Nigeria, often face internal conflicts caused by extremist groups. We have seen in Sudan how traditional means of intervention sometimes worsened the conflict. The GSI, on the other hand, offers dialogue instead of confrontation, without supporting any particular group. This helps resolve issues peacefully and encourages African countries to solve their own problems. The GSI also offers support against terrorism. Out of 54 countries, 21 are actively engaged in military or police training to eliminate the threat of terrorism, and around 40 countries are somehow involved with China to promote peace. Moreover, China is engaged in providing advanced military training and intelligence sharing to around 6000 military officers and 1000 police officers in African region to deal with extreme security threats.
In the African region, many countries face both traditional and modern security challenges, such as climate change, healthcare, cyber threats, and food insecurity. Countries face extreme heat, water scarcity, flooding, cyclones, desertification, and drought. The GSI promotes climate friendly agriculture practices, encourages water management initiatives like the Nile Basin and Lake Chad, and helps to build rainwater harvesting systems. The Sahel countries face food insecurity due to erratic rainfall and desertification. To handle this, the GSI provides opportunities to develop smart farming techniques to ensure a smooth food supply. South Africa and Kenya are more prone to cyber threats than other countries. To solve this, initiatives such as the “Plan of Actions on Jointly Building a China‑Africa Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace (2025–2026)” and Cybersecurity Emergency-Response Cooperation are trying to overcome cybersecurity threats. GSI also offers digital learning and training programs to deal with cyber threats and to build local human capital.
The economic development of the region heavily depends upon resilient infrastructure. Without proper infrastructural development such as inadequate roads, unreliable electricity, lack of communication, and weak port networks. countries face poor economic growth, which ultimately leads to other security crises. African countries face the same kind of challenges. The GSI provides opportunities for infrastructure development in Africa through heavy investment in ports, roads, and energy projects under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In 2025, China under the BRI, invested around $35 billion in the African region alone. More than 3000 Chinese linked companies are present in the region, creating jobs and improving living standards. The GSI has the ability to develop infrastructure to address the root causes of poverty and inequality, which leads to other traditional and non-traditional security threats. It seeks to increase per capita income to improve living standards and reduce security threats.
The GSI, no doubt, provides many opportunities to the African region, but several factors undermine the effectiveness of this initiative. The very first challenge for the African countries is poor governance and political instability. This leads to corruption and affects the continuity of policies. The institutions in the African region are neither transparent nor accountable, causing severe challenges to the smooth functioning of the initiative. The Countries like Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria often face delays in the implementation of these projects. The other problem facing African countries is the debt burden. More than 20 countries in Africa are facing debt crises, the most prominent being Egypt, Kenya, Angola, Ghana, and DR Congo. This debt burden creates instability, as large amounts of money are diverted towards paying back loans, which affects the development of education, health, security, and poverty reduction. Political and social instability can also be caused by the debt crisis. The third problem that Africa faces is the existence of a large number of armed groups. The Boko Haram in Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon; Al Shabaab in Somalia and Kenya; M23 in Congo; RSF in Sudan; and Tuareg militias in Mali and Niger. These groups are extremely dangerous to the normal operation of the initiative.
African nations can take a number of measures to handle these challenges. African countries should make mutual efforts to eliminate power misuse that is caused by poor governance and political instability. There should be no secret enforcement mechanisms and they must be rule of law. Political stability can be achieved by building citizens’ trust in institutions and by providing equal opportunity to everyone. The GSI is supposed to collaborate with the African nations to advocate political ethics. The debt burden problem can be resolved through the use of the debt restructuring policies that have been adopted by most countries in Africa, including Ethiopia, Zambia, Ghana, Kenya and Chad. These are prominent instances of how these nations reform the debt issue to concentrate on other vital sectors of growth, including health, education, and infrastructures. The process of debt restructuring can work by negotiating the terms of loans and by reducing the interest rates. The third problem, the existence of militant groups can be resolved through cooperation on a regional level. The African Union (AU) can play a crucial player, as it has been the case in Somalia and Chad. Peace missions like African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) and the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) in the Chad region (Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon) should be encouraged more to eliminate security threats posed by these groups.
