China's policy towards Africa has the potential to lift the continent out of poverty if all its contents are implemented accordingly. In the last nine years, the Asian economic giant released two position papers on its policy on Africa, which act as guidelines to its dealings with the continent.

Beijing's scholars and foreign policy mandarins are experimenting on the "power/knowledge" model to win the hearts and minds of African thinkers and wielders of power in governments and regional groupings. [...] China's new power/knowledge approach to African affairs is part of its emerging African strategy. 

The administration may not be doing her any favors in embracing a national security approach ... that de-emphasizes America's military role, encourages the use of the tools of "soft power," such as diplomacy and social media, and plays up coalition-building over going it alone.

In our three previous installments we discussed how President Obama's six year experiment in retrenching American power has failed. It has created more global disorder, magnified threats to American security, and has shifted America's strategic posture in damaging ways that diminish our ability to shape the international environment.