Guns for Oil: An Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Weapons Sales to Africa in Exchange for Oil

Presenter: Lauren Dickey, Asian Studies & Chinese

Beginning in 1949, China has gradually increased the scope of its weapons sales overseas to include 40 countries, 21 of which are located in Africa. With Chinese weapons sales in 2009 reaching 900 million U.S. dollars, the global community cannot help but pay attention to China’s overseas weapons sales model. At the same time, resource-rich African nations have become the center of China’s new geopolitical strategies and starting point for oil development and extraction programs. With decades of cooperative experience in the energy sector, Africa has become an important area through which China is able to further diversify its energy resources. In the process of China’s assistance to help Africa develop an oil market, many other forms of aid and investment were also necessary. The most important form of aid can be best seen through “goods for goods” bartering transactions, especially in the form of Chinese weapons for African oil. My paper examines the realities of weapons-for-oil transactions as well as other Chinese involvement in Africa’s natural resources and domestic economies, illustrating the implications for U.S.-China policy and the international community, in hopes that other researches will pay even closer attention to weapons-for-oil exchanges in the future of Sino-African relations.