David Hundeyin: Why China is not giving visa-free access to Africans

By Chioma Obinagwam

Award-winning journalist, David Hundeyin has explained why China is not among the list of countries that offer visa-free access to Africans.

OpporTechies gathered from a post he made on his official X account on Sunday.

He said:

For the record, anyone who has anything to say about China not offering visa-free access to African countries is either being paid to say it or is just not an intelligent person.

The purpose of visa-free access to a country is economic, not political. Countries offer visa-free entry to populations that offer them the economic value that they need. So production-heavy countries like China need cash-rich consumers like those from southeast Asia, Europe and North America, and tourism-heavy countries need tourists with money to spend.

The only economic value that most African populations currently have to offer is cheap labour – which is not a problem that China with its 1.4 billion people has. The only thing that would happen if China opened its borders to Africa is that >100 million Africans would scrape together some airfare, disappear into China and become a black underclass on yet another continent. Who needs that shit? What Africans need is economic growth at home, not a place to escape to. And the country doing more than any other in the world to make that African economic growth happen is China.

So the next time you unlock your Oppo smartphone and load a data package from your mobile network built on Huawei and ZTE infrastructure, before stepping into Mobolaji Johnson Rail Station and getting an SGR train to Ibadan, all of which was built by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation and financed by the China EXIM Bank, remember that infrastructure that grows your economy and cheap access to powerful technology that will give your kids a future is what you need in your African country – not visa-free access to China.

Get your head out of your ass.