Uncovering African Agency: The Media, Civil Society Organizations and Sino-Ghana Relations

The burgeoning ‘ChinAfrica’ debates often fail to consider questions of African agency and in particular, the role played by civil society organizations (CSOs), the media and local groupings to give greater voice to African agency in Sino-African relations. Drawing on qualitative methods (interviews and content analysis), the study examines the relationship and focuses primarily on the case of Ghana to investigate how CSOs and the media engage, negotiate, influence, and resist Chinese actors' involvement in Africa. The findings posit that both Ghanaian state and non-state actors make efforts to influence and shape their engagement with the Chinese. Significantly, the media and CSOs, local community and private groupings exert greater agency and prompt state-level agency in Sino-African relations. Strikingly, it is revealed that the media, CSOs and local communities are sometimes complicit in the whole attempt at challenging and exposing Chinese activities in Ghana, especially in the mining and retail sectors.