China has overtaken the United States in positive perceptions among young Africans, according to the biennial African Youth Survey published Wednesday. The gap is not close.
The survey, conducted for the Ichikowitz Family Foundation, polled 4,901 respondents aged 18 to 24 across 16 African countries. Ninety-five percent of young Africans said they consider China’s influence on the continent positive, against 85 percent for the United States. India, Germany, and the United Kingdom all scored higher than Washington. Even Russia, at war in Ukraine and accused of recruiting Africans to fight in its military, registered 83 percent, up from 68 percent in 2024.
The shift is not about ideology. The survey’s title, “practical,” captures the mood. Young Africans see China building roads, ports, and railways. They see Chinese products in every market. They see the tangible presence of a power that does not lecture them about democracy or human rights before writing a check. As Ivor Ichikowitz, the South African industrialist who commissioned the survey, put it: much of the swing toward China was achieved through the physical accomplishments of the Chinese across Africa.
The United States, by contrast, is seen as unreliable and conditional. Nearly three-fifths of respondents continent-wide said they believe the US would disregard international law to win access to natural resources. In South Africa, which has had an adversarial relationship with the Trump administration, only 58 percent saw the US as a positive influence, the lowest of any surveyed country. Almost three-quarters of young South Africans said their leaders needed to stand up to Trump.
The survey was conducted against a backdrop of Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff policies and ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East that have scrambled global supply chains. Africa’s mineral wealth, lithium, cobalt, rare earths, has become a prize that both Washington and Beijing are competing for more aggressively. But the US is competing from a position of declining trust.
The foundation said in its report that perceived influence from China and India has grown since 2024, with China increasingly viewed as a more favorable partner than the US, a sentiment shaped in part by the return of the Trump administration.
Russia’s gains were most pronounced in countries where it has offered military support against Islamist insurgents. In Burkina Faso, 95 percent of young people said Russia had a positive influence on the nation, a stark reminder that security guarantees still trump other considerations in conflict zones.
The United States still leads on one measure: 81 percent of respondents said Washington was influential, against 79 percent for China. But influence and favorability are moving in opposite directions. Young Africans see the US as powerful but not on their side. They see China as powerful and present. In the contest for the next generation of African opinion, that gap matters more than any diplomatic cable.