Emerging Donors' Engagements in Africa: China, India, and the Localizing Peacebuilding and Development Interventions

Today's development and peacebuilding donor landscape is much more complex than it was just a few decades ago. In addition to traditional donors, emerging donors have come to play much more prominent roles in development and peacebuilding assistance. This article explores these shifting dynamics of the donor landscape by analyzing China's and India's engagements with African states. In particular, it investigates whether these two emerging donors' development and peacebuilding interventions are framed around the localization of aid concerns that have animated traditional donors. The article shows that nationally led and nationally owned development and peacebuilding priorities are central to the provision of aid by these emerging donors. However, neither China nor India has explicitly joined the localization of aid debate. The term “localization” does not appear in the key documents produced by the government agencies that oversee these countries' development and peacebuilding interventions. Moreover, neither China nor India has signed onto the various international agreements that place localization at the forefront of traditional donor agendas. This article argues that the local is important to both China and India. However, for these two countries, localization is reflected in the emphasis on nationally led and nationally owned development and peacebuilding priority setting; and the promotion of state capacity and strength rather than as a way of working with civil society and nongovernmental organizations. These engagements with the local by China and India in the context of Africa have shifted over time as their footprints across the continent have expanded and their global aspirations have shifted.