China, not America, is the country African youth now admire most

The latest release of a biennial survey of nearly 5,000 young Africans has produced an uncomfortable number for Washington: 95% now view China's influence on the continent positively, against 85% for the United States, with the UK, Germany, the EU and India all ranking higher than the Yanks. The finding comes from the Ichikowitz Family Foundation's African Youth Survey, a study whose scale and reach with governments and the AU make it hard to ignore, even though its founder – arms manufacturer Ivor Ichikowitz – has an obvious commercial stake in how Africa's great-power alignments are read. In what follows, we unpack what the numbers really show..BizNews Reporter.There's a number in the new African Youth Survey that deserves more attention than it will probably get: 95%. According to the survey of almost 5 000 young Africans (18-24) that’s the percentage who view China's influence on the continent as positive.Before reading further, here’s a disclaimer you won’t find in the small print. The foundation is the creation of and chaired by the controversial Ivor Ichikowitz (60) whose Paramount Group is a massive private armaments business. Any rational mind would quickly conclude that given his clientele, especially in Africa, there’s something of a vested interest in the survey’s outcomes. The Foundation isn't a mass-membership charity. It's closer to a well-funded, single-family research-and-advocacy vehicle. Its influence comes almost entirely through the Survey, which has become a genuine reference point for governments, the AU, UN agencies and media because there's little else that surveys young Africans, at scale and face-to-face. That gives Ichikowitz — and by extension a foundation built on defence-industry wealth — an outsized voice in setting the terms of the "what does Africa's youth think" conversation, which is worth keeping in mind when reading its framing alongside the raw data.With that as context, the latest survey just released reports that African youth rate the Chinese ten percentage points above the Americans - notwithstanding its autocracy; president for life; capital controls; one party state; media censors in every newsroom; and other controls that are directly counter to the apparent African desire for freedom. According to the arms maker’s foundation, the positive perception of America among our continent’s youth has now dropped behind the UK (95%), Germany (90%), the European Union (92%) and India (91%). Even Russia, at 83%, is closing in on Washington. For a generation raised on Western assumptions about soft power, that's a scoreboard worth studying.South Africa is the outlier worth flagging. The survey reports that 58% of South African youth see US influence positively – the lowest of the 16 countries surveyed – and 71% think their leaders should stand up to Trump rather than accommodate him. That's a domestic story as much as a foreign one, playing out against Pretoria's own friction with Washington. But don't mistake this for reflexive anti-Americanism. Continent-wide, 52% still say their leaders should find a way to work with Trump regardless of differences, and Africa's youth are more optimistic about US military and security cooperation than about almost any other bilateral measure.What's actually going on is closer to how a shrewd investor reads a balance sheet than how a diplomat reads a communiqué. Young Africans rank the ability to invest in infrastructure and the economy as the top criterion for choosing an international ally (43%), ahead of respect for natural resources, human rights records, and non-interference. Fifty-five percent say they'd rather partner with a country that delivers tangible benefits than one that merely shares their values. It's a continent-sized version of Buffett's old line about price and value: they're not interested in the rhetoric a partner sells itself with, only in what actually gets built.That pragmatism sits inside a much more optimistic mood than the headline numbers might suggest. Afro-optimism is at its strongest since the pandemic – 47% now say their country is heading in the right direction, up from 30% in 2024 – even as young Africans rank the cost of living as the single most disruptive force of the past five years, ahead of political instability and disease. Ichikowitz's own framing is blunt: this is a "delivery generation" that will judge Washington, Beijing, Moscow and their own governments by exactly the same yardstick – who is actually building something, and who is just talking.For Western policymakers still assuming a natural affinity with Africa's youth, that should sting a little. For Beijing, it's a return on a decade of infrastructure spending that Washington will find hard to match with speeches alone.This survey lands at a moment when Washington, Beijing and Moscow are all recalibrating their Africa strategy around critical minerals and supply chains.But the China number isn't really about China. .Read more:.The Economist: Can China rescue South African leftists, save them from Donald Trump?.Beijing and the US are seen as almost equally influential – 79% versus 81% – so the survey’s results are about warmth, not reach. And the warmth gap is widening because of how young Africans, not just here in SA, view Donald Trump's second term. And this is the part that even an arms supplier acquiring influence through his own foundation will find easy to defend. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed believe Washington will simply disregard international law to secure access to their countries' resources. Almost half think the dismantling of USAID will hurt their countries, mostly through weaker healthcare and disease prevention. That's not fringe sentiment; it's a majority view held by a generation that watched an institution which shaped African health systems for half a century get switched off almost overnight..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

China, not America, is the country African youth now admire most

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