\u201cFrom the outset, the Global Gateway has been described as the European Union\u2019s attempt to rival the Belt and Road Initiative\u2019s overseas infrastructure investment funds. At \u20ac300 billion through 2027, however, it is a David-versus-Goliath-style undertaking,\u201d says Gabriele Rosana, an associate fellow at the Institute of International Affairs in Rome. China has already been investing heavily in clean energy in Africa, and with far fewer constraints. \u201cThe Union is operating in a system of precise rules, stakes, and constraints unknown to Chinese centralism,\u201d Rosana says.<\/p>\n
According to a study<\/a> from Griffith University in Australia, energy-related investments under the Belt and Road Initiative in the first half of 2025 were the highest they\u2019ve been since 2013, when the initiative was launched\u2014and it was Africa, with $39 billion, that had the highest-value contracts in this sector. A recent report<\/a> from the energy think tank Ember revealed that China exported 15GW of solar panels to Africa in the year leading up to June 2025, a 60 percent year-on-year increase of such imports. It is not certain that all of these devices will be installed\u2014some could be a trade triangulation to circumvent tariffs\u2014but in any case, Beijing is positioning itself to take advantage of the continent\u2019s green transition.<\/p>\n Europe, though, is committed to grasping this opportunity as well. \u201cOver the past two years, competitiveness has gradually, but with increasing conviction, become the key word on the European policy agenda, along with defense,\u201d says Rosana. \u201cInternational cooperation has also been reinvented with a view to strategic autonomy, and put at the service of the Union\u2019s global projection, at a time when, with the massive reorganization of trade balances due to the America-China challenge, Europe must rapidly diversify its supply chains and trade.\u201d<\/p>\n The EU hasn\u2019t been alone in feeling the need to respond to China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative. Before President Donald Trump\u2019s second term, the US had also felt compelled to act. In 2021, President Joe Biden\u2019s administration announced an international infrastructure program, the Build Back Better World, which the following year was expanded to the G7 and renamed the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI). Among the PGI\u2019s main areas of focus were energy and Africa: indeed, two solar power plants in Angola, a wind energy and storage system in Kenya, and a nickel processing plant for batteries in Tanzania appeared<\/a> on the list of early US projects.<\/p>\n But perhaps the most important infrastructure project the West is pursuing in Africa is the Lobito Corridor<\/a>, a railway line that will connect Zambia\u2019s copper deposits and the DRC\u2019s cobalt mines to the Atlantic port of Lobito in Angola. Copper is the metal of electrification; lithium, a key ingredient in batteries\u2014both are essential raw materials for the green transition, and China currently dominates the supply of both.<\/p>\n The African continent, then, is now a battleground between superpowers interested, first and foremost, in its resources. But with a young and growing population\u2014in the sub-Saharan region, the population will grow by an estimated 79 percent over the next three decades<\/a>\u2014and an energy system dominated by fossil fuels, Africa\u2019s decarbonization will be essential to the success of net zero. \u201cThe choices Africa makes today,\u201d said Von der Leyen during the September announcement, \u201care shaping the future of the entire world.\u201d<\/p>\n