The Atlantic Front: China’s Commercial Ports Are Building a Naval Foothold

Sixty miles east of Lagos, the Lekki Deep Sea Port gleams as a symbol of modern maritime logistics. With its massive ship-to-shore cranes and capacity to handle 1.2 million containers annually, it is Nigeria’s first true deep-water port, designed to end the notorious congestion at Apapa and Tin Can Island. For Nigerian businesses, Lekki is an economic lifeline, a long-overdue infrastructure upgrade that promises to slash shipping costs and unlock regional trade. But for national security planners in Washington and Abuja, Lekki represents something far more complex: the tangible, concrete anchor of China’s expanding strategic footprint in the Atlantic.

The narrative surrounding Chinese infrastructure in Africa often focuses on debt traps or resource extraction. While relevant, those frames miss the specific, dual-use challenge emerging in the Gulf of Guinea. The real story is not just about loans; it is about logistics. By financing, building, and operating a chain of deep-water ports from Lomé to Lagos to the potential future sites in Equatorial Guinea or Gabon, Beijing is securing something it has never possessed: strategic depth in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Lekki port itself illustrates how commercial and strategic interests blur. It is majority-owned (52.5%) by a joint venture led by China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), a subsidiary of the state-owned giant China Communications Construction Company. This is not a private firm in the Western sense; it is a central component of China’s “civil-military fusion” strategy, which mandates that civilian infrastructure be buildable and usable for defense purposes. When CHEC builds a port, it builds it to specifications that can accommodate not just container ships, but heavy naval vessels.

This dual-use potential is not hypothetical. In July 2023, a flotilla of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) including a guided-missile destroyer and a supply ship made a five-day port call in Lagos. Official statements framed the visit as “friendly diplomacy” and “anti-piracy cooperation.” Strategically, however, it was a proof of concept. It demonstrated that Chinese warships could operate thousands of miles from home, dock at Chinese-built infrastructure, and replenish supplies. For a navy with global ambitions, reliable logistics are more valuable than missiles. You cannot project power if you cannot refuel.

For the United States, this creates a distinct geography of risk. For decades, the Atlantic was effectively an uncontested American lake. The U.S. focus on China was contained to the Indo-Pacific. A sustained Chinese naval presence in West Africa changes that calculus. It places PLAN assets closer to the U.S. East Coast than they are to Beijing. It complicates U.S. naval planning in the Atlantic and raises concerns about the security of undersea cables that carry the bulk of global internet traffic, many of which land along the West African coast.

The challenge for U.S. policy is that West African nations are not choosing China out of ideological alignment. They are choosing infrastructure because they need it, and for twenty years, Western partners offered lectures on governance while Beijing offered cranes and concrete. Nigeria needs Lekki to function as a modern economy. Togo needs Lomé to remain a transshipment hub. When Washington warns against these deals, it is often seen as asking African partners to subsidize American security anxieties by forfeiting their own economic development.

This reality creates a dilemma that cannot be solved by scolding. If the U.S. wants to counter the strategic implications of China’s port network, it must offer a competitive proposition. The recent Lobito Corridor project in Angola and the DRC is a start, showing that the U.S. and EU can mobilize capital for heavy infrastructure. But a single rail corridor does not offset a coastline of deep-water ports.

A more effective strategy would focus on “commercial diplomacy” that meets West Africa where it is. Instead of demanding that Nigeria or Ghana rip up existing contracts, which is legally and economically impossible, the U.S. should focus on the “software” of these ports: customs screening, data security, and naval cooperation. Helping partner nations maintain sovereignty over their own port data prevents Chinese operators from gaining total information dominance over regional trade flows. Increasing U.S. Coast Guard and naval visits offers an alternative security partnership that does not come with hidden strings.

Ultimately, the militarization of the Gulf of Guinea is not inevitable, but the commercial foundation for it is already poured in concrete. The cranes at Lekki are moving containers today, but they serve a long-term vision that extends far beyond commerce. Recognizing this distinction, between a commercial port and a strategic anchor, is the first step in crafting a policy that respects West African development needs while guarding against a shift in the Atlantic balance of power. The U.S. cannot stop China from building ports, but it can ensure that the Atlantic Ocean remains open, secure, and governed by international norms rather than the strategic dictates of a single competitor.