16. Upscaling Agriculture and Food Security in Africa in Pursuit of the SDGs: What Role Does China Play?

China and Africa constitute more than a third of the world’s population and China has become Africa’s largest trading partner. This has led to other forms of engagement with African countries, shaping development policies and outcomes. This chapter focuses on one important set of outcomes: the implications of the China-Africa relationship for global food security and the transferability of the Chinese model of agriculture to African countries. As the world redirects attention to pursuing sustainable development goals (SDGs), such engagements with China in agricultural development will affect the attainment of SDG 1 on eliminating extreme poverty and SDG 2 on achieving zero hunger. China has embarked on an effort to improve African agricultural capacity and productivity partly by sharing experience, technology transfer and by encouraging Chinese agricultural investments in Africa. This has included setting up new exchange frameworks and programmes to both bring Chinese experts to African countries and African students and researchers to China. However, China’s engagement with Africa has also raised concerns about new forms of international exploitation and their impacts on sustainable development. This chapter examines possible lessons for African countries from the success of agriculture in China, as well as the potential challenges arising from China’s own development priorities, particularly when the Chinese model of agriculture is implemented in Africa.