My dissertation investigates the role of human resource development programs in Chinese foreign policy in Africa. The key question which motivates this inquiry is the following: besides increasing economic leverage, how does China build and project power in its relations with African states? If power is to be viewed uniquely through the lens of economic prowess and material capabilities, how to make sense of China’s increasing investments in human resource development for African states?

I argue that China’s power projection in Africa goes beyond material capability and financial prowess and is better accounted for by understanding the role of providing capacity building programs and vocational trainings for Africans of all walks of life (peacekeepers, military officers, medical staff, journalists, civil servants of all ranks, etc.). It finds that expert knowledge productions and skills transfers programs are central to China’s power building mechanisms in Africa. Accounting for them theoretically and empirically is vital to understanding the mechanisms of China’s power building and projection in Africa and beyond Africa.

My dissertation offers a new theoretical framework to analyze and understand the implications of knowledge production and skills transfers in foreign policy, and in doing so, it illuminates some key theoretical questions that scholars of international relations (IR) have paid little attention to. Such questions as: what is the relationship between foreign policy investments in capacity building programs and power projection of rising powers? How do new norms, values, and representations become internalized and accepted as alternatives in Global South states? And, how do skills transfers and knowledge production programs serve as spaces for interpellation, socialization, and production of common sense about China’s relations with African states?