Inside a greenhouse on the edge of Nairobi, a small crate holds the hopes of Robert Gituru and a team of researchers from Kenya and China. It is filled with healthy bunches of red and green grapes — some of the first ever produced in central Africa.

The grapes are varieties developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and designed to thrive in warm, semi-arid environments. A joint Kenyan–Chinese team has been growing them with the aim of planting the seeds of a wine-producing industry in Kenya.

“It’s got some people here very excited,” says Gituru, director of the Sino-Africa Joint Research Centre, a facility established with the help of CAS that opened last November in the grounds of the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

Grapes aren’t the only crop that the centre has received from CAS; the academy has also brought strains of rice that have the potential to increase Kenya’s production by more than one-third, according to Gituru. Chinese researchers have also introduced a method of using plastic sheets to preserve soil humidity for fields planted with maize (corn).

For Kenya, the results of these experiments could have some big impacts: like many parts of Africa, the country faces perennial food shortages. “The next step is to try these on a large scale,” says Gituru.

China’s presence in Africa has been increasing for two decades, but it started to accelerate in 2013, when President Xi Jinping launched his ambitious infrastructure-development project, now known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). That venture, often estimated to cost more than US$1 trillion, aims to connect China with more than 130 nations through roads, railways and marine links to increase trade and China’s influence in the world.

So far, 39 African countries and the African Union Commission have signed BRI cooperation agreements, with others expected to follow. Africa has emerged as one of the strongest supporters of the BRI, with most of the continent having joined the programme; and China has become the largest financier of African infrastructure, funding one in five projects. As in many other regions participating in the BRI, this has implications for science and education.

Women in Egypt learn Chinese calligraphy in an event held by a Confucius Institute. Credit: Wu Huiwo/Xinhua/Zuma

Although imagined before the BRI, the Sino-Africa centre has become a crucial part of the project’s scientific investments on the continent. As the first research centre between the CAS and an African country, it will form the headquarters for a handful of similar institutions sprouting up across the continent, from Madagascar to Guinea. Plans call for these centres to explore flora, fauna and biodiversity protection.

China’s assistance is also reflected in education there, particularly in the sciences. China hosted nearly 62,000 African university and postgraduate students in 2016, second only to France at 103,000, according to the most recent figures available from the Chinese Ministry of Education and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The Chinese government also offered 8,470 scholarships to African students in 2015, says Rui Yang, associate dean of international education at the University of Hong Kong.

China’s support for African postgraduate and postdoctoral students is unprecedented, says Mohamed Hassan, president of the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in Trieste, Italy, and a Sudanese mathematician.

“When it comes to training a new generation of African scholars, [the Chinese] are doing a marvellous job,” Hassan told Nature. “They are doing better than any other country for Africa.”

Open arms

From oil pipelines in Sudan to railways in the Horn of Africa and fishing fleets in Ghana, China’s influence is evident everywhere in Africa. In return, Africa is eagerly embracing the expertise and easy-to-access loans as it faces a swelling population — expected to double by 2050.

Zeng Aiping, deputy executive director of the China-Asian African Cooperation Centre in Beijing, says that Africa is “the natural partner” of the BRI, which is, at its core, a development enterprise.

“More and more African countries have recognized the importance and significance of the BRI for African development,” he says.

Western critics say that China’s activities in Africa are saddling countries with more debt that they can ever repay, while carting away minerals and other resources. But supporters say that China has brought expertise on important development issues and has a much better sense than Western nations of the challenges involved in raising standards of living.

In the arena of research and development, China has concentrated on three main areas in Africa: information technology, agriculture and education. These are all key goals for development, and they are sectors in which China would like to increase trade or where it sees benefits for its own companies.

On the technological front, China is unmatched in Africa. The country’s telecommunications giant Huawei has built half of the 4G networks on the continent and most of the 2G and 3G; two of the three most popular smartphone brands are Chinese.

By stocking up the continent with its 5G standard, China hopes to secure a market of 2 billion people for the next generation of the Internet, which will service everything from smart homes to health care (see ‘Two-way trade’).