Miradie Tchekpo biggest dream has come true: She has landed a job as an interpreter working for a Chinese trading company in her home country of Benin. 

"In middle school, I watched Chinese TV channels and dreamed of traveling to China and getting to know the culture," she told DW. "So I studied Chinese ... and attended courses for three years to gain a professional qualification in Chinese," she said.

After finishing school, Tchekpo enrolled at the Confucius Institute — China's government-run institute for the promotion of its language and culture — at the University of Abomey-Calavi in Benin.

She hopes that one day she will get to look back at this as only being the beginning of big dream.

"I want to realize my dream of international trade by bringing tropical products from Benin to China and products from China to Benin," she said.

"If possible," she added, "even to the whole of Africa."

Soft power made in China

Expanding China's presence across Africa appears to be a dream she shares with the Chinese government: Since 2004, when the Confucius Institute was first founded, Beijing has been investing rather heavily in the worldwide expansion and export of its culture.

In Africa, there are Confucius Institutes offering courses in 49 countries.

"One of the ways in which China is expanding its soft power on the African continent is not only economic, but also sociocultural, especially through the spread of Chinese language teaching," said Simbarashe Gukurume, a social scientist and lecturer at Sol Plaatje University in Kimberley, South Africa.

Few actual career prospects

There are caveats to learning Mandarin at any of the countless Confucius Institutes, which are attached to China's Education Ministry.

Though Beijing awards students in Africa with generous scholarships, there are hardly any job opportunities waiting for them in China,  Gukurume said.

Native speakers are generally employed to bridge the gap between Chinese languages and and the languages of major trade partners.

Chinese companies and government firms are known across the continent for primarily hiring Chinese workers for most of the infrastructure projects that the country is invested in — such as building ports, roads and airports.

After graduation, Gukurume said, many former students end up becoming teachers of Mandarin:

"Almost the entire faculty and staff of the Confucius Institute at the University of Zimbabwe is made up of local academics who teach Mandarin and have received some financial support for their studies in China," Gukurume said.

Mixing language class with Mao, Hu and Xi

Gukurume said there was a more sinister side to this power differential. "China benefits significantly from this, as most of these institutes and other cultural exchange activities are based on bilateral agreements between governments, and sometimes come with unrestricted Chinese access to African resources," he said.

China's cultural activities and its lithium and cobalt mining in Africa are ultimately two sides of the same coin, he said.

In fact, the Confucius Institute has faced repeated criticism for not even trying to hide its aspirations of helping the Chinese government bolster its economic and political influence across Africa:

Compared with other countries' institutions for the promotion of language and culture, China's Confucius Institute stands out for the fact that its branches are often based at universities and other higher-education establishments.

This has raised some concern regarding the direct influence of the Chinese Communist Party among educational elites.

"They interfere with the academic freedom within universities and indoctrinate students with Chinese political systems that could be seen as authoritarian or undemocratic. Young people who familiarize themselves with this political system [will] adopt undemocratic principles," the social scientist said.

Gukurume said the closure of several Confucius Institutes in Europe and the United States provided further proof of an agenda that is built on the intertwining of the cultural and the political values of China.

China: No longer a 'sleeping giant' in Africa

The number of Confucius Institutes in Africa continues to grow rapidly — and, with it, China's soft power: With 10 institutes, South Africa is now considered a major center for learning Mandarin on the African continent.

South African private language schools, which previously used to attract South Americans and Asians with their affordable offerings for English classes, are now diversifying into Mandarin, often using the skills of people who were educated at Confucius Institutes before.

Many private schools and even some public ones in South Africa now offer Mandarin as a foreign language.

Even the landlocked mountain kingdom of Lesotho with a population of fewer than 2.4 million people, which is wholly enveloped by South Africa, has two Confucius Institutes.

China is also investing more into theaters, museums, exhibitions, the film industry and other media enterprises in Africa and libraries in some parts of the continent.

'Institutional cultural presence'

In a 2023 study titled "China's Institutionalized Cultural Presence in Africa," researcher Avril Joffe examined the perception of these growing cultural offerings from China — which only decades ago was barely on the radar of many of Africa's then newly independent governments.

Joffe, who heads the Cultural Policy and Management Department at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, told DW her research revealed that China's interests in Africa go well beyond economic, political and security issues: She said the expansion of China's soft power on the continent could push out regional culture and content.

"In order to mitigate the potentially negative effects of this institutionalized cultural presence, more targeted recommendations need to be made, especially to civil society, artists, creatives, filmmakers, musicians, as well as governments," Joffe said.

The steep increase in numbers of African students enrolling at Chinese universities — up from less than 2,000 in 2003 to over 81,500 in 2018 — comes as no surprise as a consequence, she said.

'African agency' for African needs and cultures

Joffe said there was a lack of rules of engagement to rein in China's influence in Africa. She acknowledged, however, that "we do not have clarity yet about about whether China's anti-demoractic ideology is filtering into all these investments."

"These corrective measures are needed to ensure that this does not happen," she said. African countries need to step up their own national funding and cultural scholarships to reduce China's funding monopoly, she added.

Joffe said relevant institutions such as the African Union would need to establish "a unified policy that allows each African country to strengthen their bargaining power and enhance the positive effects of China's investments."

"One way is to ensure that the AU and other regional bodies really insert African agency into their negotiations around the investments from China," Joffe said.

Rodrigue Guezodje contributed reporting to this article.

Adapted from German by Philipp Sandner

Edited by: Sertan Sanderson