Beyond Digital Adoption: How Africa Can Turn China–Africa Technology Cooperation into Development Capability

China–Africa digital cooperation offers significant opportunities, but its outcome is not predetermined. Africa’s digital future will depend on whether access to technology is converted into knowledge, productive capacity and institutional strength. The goal is not technological isolation, but technological agency: the capacity to choose, adapt, govern and increasingly create digital solutions. Cooperation becomes a genuine development partnership when African actors move beyond receiving technologies to shaping how they are designed, applied and developed.