China and the tiny East African island state of Comoros are now strategic partners. The relationship was formalised on Tuesday ahead of the summit meeting of the Forum on China Africa Cooperation being held in Beijing.
The upgraded relationship flows from the quiet work China has done on the island with an eye on the long term: a foothold in the Comoros would be strategically useful as the island sits at the mouth of the Mozambique Channel.
According to a US State Department study, about one-third of the world’s shipping passes by the Comoros, but without adequate ports, it is not in a position to take advantage. This gap is what China is seeking to fill.
As this article on Stratnewsglobal (https://stratnewsglobal.com/world-news/will-comoros-be-chinas-next-djibouti-in-indian-ocean-region/) details, China has invested heavily in the island’s need for development assistance.
In March 2015, the China Communication Construction Company was awarded a contract to develop the port on the island of Moheli. It was built at a cost of $149 million and handed over two years later. There’s more.
In March 2018, an agreement was signed with the China Road & Bridge Corporation for building a deepwater harbour at the existing port of Moroni. The cost of the project was reported to be $165 million and it’s not clear if work has begun.
A greenfield deepwater port is also planned in Sereheni, south of Moroni which will cater for vessels of 30,000 tonnes.
More than that, China has been building highways and roads on all three islands that make up the Comoros chain. It has installed an underwater fibre optic cable network linking Comoros with East Africa, built multiple housing projects and rehabilitated the international airport at Moroni.
Not surprisingly, China is a mong the few countries that has an embassy in the Comoros and built close ties to the military (current president Azali Assoumani was chief of staff of the army before transitioning to politics).
The buzz is China is seeking to build a new “support facility” in the Comoros that could keep an eye on the southern Indian Ocean. Recall that since 2016, China has built an exclusive miliary facility on the Horn of Africa, in Djibouti, that supports all its military and naval vessels deployed in the Gulf of Aden for counterpiracy operations.
The Djibouti facility is said to include troop barracks, training area, storage facilities and a military heliport. An extended pier enables the docking of the PLA’s largest ships and submarines. China probably has similar ambitions in the Comoros and the strategic partnership announced on Tuesday is a step in that direction.
