This study assessed the effect of China’s engagement and strategic partnership on regional security in West Africa, focusing on five key states, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Mali. Using a qualitative research design that integrates documentary analysis, policy review, and comparative case studies, the research interrogates how Chinese loans, trade, and infrastructure investments reshape political economy dynamics and strategic dependencies across the sub-region. The method adopted for the study is the historical method relying on the Marxist imperialism and the dependency theories which revealed a contemporary form of economic imperialism which has led to security dependency given the security terrain in West Africa and her inability to tackle such security issues while China is willing to assist even in training security personnel. Findings reveal that China’s security engagement no doubt has enormously assisted West African states especially in sophisticated surveillance however, it has also deepened debt exposure, and dependence, thereby constraining the policy autonomy of weaker states. Mali’s fragile security environment, compounded by external interventions, restricts China’s operational depth but still influences sovereignty calculations. Across all cases, China’s involvement intersects with regional security through dual-use infrastructure, elite capture, and environmental risks. The study revealed that China’s increasing role in West Africa’s security from arms sales and peacekeeping to digital surveillance networks has strengthened state capacity to tackle insecurity. Such engagements reveal an extension of imperial control into the security domain where technology becomes a tool of soft domination while the export of these surveillance infrastructures reproduce a technological dependency.
Odokuma et al. (Tue,) studied this question.