Afro-Sino Relations and Its Impact on the Integration and Development in Africa: A Case Study of Ghana.

Abstract:

This article critically examines the nascent Ghana–China bilateral relations and their regional integration and development implications for Africa. Employing a constructivist and interpretivist paradigms-influenced exploratory qualitative research design, the research is grounded on semi-structured interviews of purposively chosen policy actors and experts recruited from leading ministries and civil society bodies. Through thematic analysis, the study establishes that while China's emergence in Ghana has resulted in the development of infrastructure, learning processes, and flows of social commerce, all these are inclusive of structural imbalances, degradation of the environment, elite capture, and undermining of democratic sovereignty. The respondents identified "One China Policy" as a marker of conditionality of soft power, and were most concerned with clandestine loan agreements, devastating devastation of local production by subsidized exports, and Chinese intrusion into political funding. Additionally, the study establishes that China's bilateral approach hinders the collective integration processes of Africa, i.e., those pursued through AfCFTA and ECOWAS, by promoting fragmentation and weakening policy coherence at the regional level. Drawing on theory of economic integration and dependency criticism, the research concludes by calling on African nations, and in particular Ghana, to reassess their foreign policy to make it appealing to long-term regional ambitions. It suggests open, transparent, and strategically bargained relationships that deepen continental solidarity and sustainable development.