China’s engagements on the african continent: interrogating its true mission and objectives on the continent

China’s engagement(s) throughout the African continent has met with mixed reactions from academics, politicians, civil society, and interest groups. In that regards, this paper questions the link between China-Africa, if this is a new form of colonialism or is China kind to the continent. Thus, this paper examines whether the debates regarding the nature of the China-Africa relations can be qualified or categorized as a new form of colonialism approach or not. Also, the paper analyzes the perception of academics, politicians, civil society and interested groups about the implications towards the China-Africa economic cooperation and explains whether China is taking advantage of the weak African states in the name of South-South cooperation or playing the role of a contemporary substitute of the old colonial system. The paper has adopted an Afrocentricity theory as a lens sometimes referred as a theory of social change that is initiated and better clarified by Asante Molefi Kete (1980 and 2003). Afrocentricity is an approach to the study of world history that focuses on the history of people of recent African descent. To achieve the aims of this paper, the author(s) benefited from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of secondary data covering China’s economic engagements in Africa. Conceptually, it is found that China has a large influence in Zambia over the mining industry. It is affirmed that China’s investments in the mining sector control over 88%. Therefore, it is concluded in this paper that China’s presence on the African continent presents equal opportunities (economic development, e.g., employment creation) and threats (loss of Sovereignty, employment exploitation). Thereafter, this paper recommends that African governments should be pro-active in order to exploit the potential opportunities. The paper also recommends that there should be an economic win-win cooperation as per China’s African Policy (2006), which implies that there should be a mutual benefit.