China is Africa's largest trading partner with over $200 billion in combined imports and exports annually.
China also financed billions of dollars of infrastructure projects like roads, ports and railroads across Africa.
The COVID-19 crisis is hindering African countries' ability to repay debt and decreasing China's willingness to invest abroad.
Janssen is the director of the China program at the Stimson Center.
She says China's role in African financing will change as China grapples with economic recovery from COVID-19.
The Chinese economy is taking a hit from COVID-19.
That's inevitably going to dampen the Chinese ability to disperse financing or continue to support infrastructure projects in developing countries including Africa at a rate that it did before.
structure projects, including the massive Belt and Road initiative.
The Chinese government, banks and private investors lent about $146 billion to African countries between 2000 and 2017.
Due to COVID-19, many the world's chief lenders are calling for a pause in payments or debt forgiveness.
among of that that the African countries owe China, whether it is financially feasible for China to forgive those that is a key question here.
It is estimated that African countries owe a combined $44 billion to service debt this year.
Leading lenders have agreed to pause debts.
China said it's open to the idea but prefers to negotiate terms with individual countries.
The Chinese attitude towards that to begin with is quite resistant.
Well, it doesn't mean that China will not engage in, for example, debt
renegotiation or debt restructuring or even postponement to offer longer grace period for the African countries to people.
But I think a blanket that forgiveness is not in the cards to begin with." Hunter Ryder runs a business consultancy based in Beijing.
She says many African leaders believe taking a debt is essential to building the national infrastructure to jumpstart economies and lift citizens out of poverty.
It's never great to have a debt.
But the reason why African leaders have decided to go into debt to fund different infrastructure projects,
to fund energy, roads, et cetera, is are badly needed on the continent.
Writers says China is one of the G20 countries that has agreed to cut debt servicing costs to 77 poor countries,
freeing up an average of $260 million per country this year.
There are going to be some infrastructure projects that will go bust, that won't be working.
And those issues need to be looked at in a much more kind of detailed structural way.
But concerns remain as to how China will react to an inability by African countries to repaid loans in the long term.
