I Introduction

Against the backdrop of rising importance of the African region and the refugee crisis, Germany has intensively introduced policy initiatives toward Africa. This study reviews existing research focusing on the characteristics, adjustments, and transformations of Germany's Africa policy, points out the insufficient scholarly attention to Africa narratives in official discourse, and proposes to use speeches on Africa by four Federal Chancellors from 1991 to 2024 as corpus, applying narrative discourse analysis to explore the values, narrative logic of Germany's official Africa narrative and its interaction with foreign policy, and to discuss implications for China's Africa narrative.

II Research Methods and Corpus

This section introduces the research methods and corpus sources. Methodologically, it draws on the "narrative discourse analysis" framework proposed by German scholar Willi Viehöver, which comprises four basic structural elements: narrative sequences, character roles, plots, and values, with single-text analysis proceeding in four steps. This study expands it to five steps: identifying narrative sequences, analyzing character roles and spatiotemporal elements, determining core oppositions and values, analyzing narrative logic, and identifying and naming typical narratives, following a cyclical analytical process from surface structure—core oppositions and values—narrative logic—typical narratives. In specific analysis, AntConc is used for afrika* concordance line observation, and NVivo12 is employed for close reading and annotation. The corpus consists of speeches on Africa by German Federal Chancellors from January 1991 to January 2024, manually collected from the German Federal Government website, with 352 texts obtained using afrika* as the keyword, among which Merkel accounts for the most at 240 and Schröder the least at 18. The annual distribution shows two small peaks, corresponding respectively to 2007 when Germany first held the EU presidency and the second EU-Africa Summit, and the period of 2017–2022 covering the fifth and sixth EU-Africa Summits and Germany's second presidency.

III Typical Africa Narratives in German Official Discourse

This section systematically reviews four typical Africa narrative modes constructed in speeches on Africa by German Federal Chancellors from 1991 to 2024 and their discursive operating mechanisms.

The hardship and turmoil narrative portrays Africa as a land of suffering characterized by economic backwardness and social instability, depicting states through semantic structures of poverty, hunger, disease, and civil war, attributing causes to territorial disputes, resource conflicts, tyranny, natural disasters, and colonial legacies alongside global challenges, with narrative outcomes pointing to threats to mass survival and Africa's craving for external aid, and response strategies emphasizing the combination of German-led international rescue, debt relief, and African self-help. In plot settings, Germany and international organizations play the hero, terrorist organizations, historical colonizers, and African authoritarian regimes serve as anti-heroes, while African people are positioned as victims and those to be saved, with underlying value logic presenting binary oppositions of peace versus war, stability versus turmoil, and development versus poverty.

The transformation and change narrative serves as a subsidiary narrative thread, presenting reform processes in African countries in economic and political fields, describing states through semantic structures of reform, democracy, and freedom, emphasizing that change is a prerequisite for progress and conforms to popular will, with outcomes covering positive aspects such as governance improvement and economic growth as well as negative effects including unemployment, and in response advocating for Africa's continued promotion of regional integration and German support and intervention. Hero roles are assumed by regional organizations such as the AU and ECOWAS and specific countries such as South Africa and Egypt, anti-heroes focus on individual authoritarian leaders, African people hold multiple identities as promoters, beneficiaries, and the disillusioned, and at the value level constructs oppositional frameworks of democracy versus authoritarianism, openness versus rigidity, and progress versus hopelessness.

The global member narrative incorporates Africa into global vision, defining states through concepts of world order and community, attributing causes to the superposition of Cold War termination, economic globalization, world multipolarization, and global challenges, advocating that Africa should assume an important role in fair and just globalization, with response paths relying on international organizations to promote global governance and institutional reform. International institutions such as the UN and WTO and various regional organizations constitute the hero spectrum, terrorism and unstable states serve as anti-heroes, spatially emphasizing global interdependence, with value logic revolving around oppositions of wealth versus poverty, fairness versus inequality, multilateralism versus nationalism, solidarity versus isolation, and highlighting the pursuit of freedom, democracy, and rights.

The multi-dimensional relationship reconstruction narrative focuses on the strategic upgrading of Germany-Africa and EU-Africa partnerships, with state definitions encompassing three dimensions of multi-party participation, multi-field expansion, and new feature shaping, at the causal level revealing fourfold considerations of African market attractiveness to the German economy, refugee security pressures, values-driven diplomacy, and strategic competition with China, with outcome narratives emphasizing new relationships based on equal consultation, mutual trust, and shared values, and response mechanisms including strategic guidance, reliance on platforms such as G7/G8/EU, and implementation of specific contractual initiatives. Hero roles extend from Germany as the core to international organizations, refugees and countries with democratic backsliding serve as anti-heroes, while China is endowed with multiple roles intertwined with competition and cooperation, with the narrative's deep layer reflecting Germany's transformative aspiration for Africa policy from traditional development assistance to comprehensive strategic partnership.

IV Diplomatic Interpretation of German Official Discourse Africa Narratives

This section interprets the diplomatic implications of German official discourse Africa narratives from three dimensions. First, value orientation runs through the narrative core, reflecting Germany's pursuit of peace, democracy, and human rights under its "post-national state" identity, attributing conflicts and poverty to the lack of Western-style democracy, and calling for global good governance. Second, the proactive foreign policy concept is manifested in Germany's aspiration to assume more international responsibility, promote international order reconstruction, and enhance its own status, which has been continuously strengthened from Merkel to Scholz. Third, economic interests and security considerations drive Germany to reconstruct its relations with Africa, as African terrorism and refugee issues threaten European security, while its resources and human potential are regarded as development opportunities, prompting Germany to expand multi-field cooperation.

V Conclusion

This section analyzes the four narratives of Africa in German official discourse and their justificatory support for policy, points out their specific characterization of China's actions in Africa, and accordingly proposes that China should optimize its Africa narrative from three aspects: taking concepts such as "a community with a shared future for mankind" as the core value starting point, strengthening the narrative force of international responsibility, and enhancing narrative affinity through addressing common historical experiences and challenges, thereby achieving benign interaction between Africa policy and narrative and external narrative competition.