By 2100, the three most populous nations in the world will be Nigeria, China, and India. In fact, nine of the ten most populous countries will be in Africa and Asia. This demographic shift is already creating new political, economic, and social conditions of global engagement, altering ongoing encounters born of colonial violence and capitalist expansion. Africa-Asia then provides an instructive lens to theorize anew. I draw on the intersection of Nigeria-China specifically to interrogate four contemporary themes within sociocultural anthropology: migration, money, race, and development.

Regarding migration and money, while the opening of new global south corridors promises migrants faster paths to affluence, their attempts to build financial bridges between China and Nigeria expose the struggles of challenging the prevailing US-dominated global monetary system. In the case of race and development, Nigeria-China social relations bear the possibility of remaking identities constructed away from the gaze of whiteness. Yet, because ‘Chinese’ development is ensnared in a logic defined by the West, it ensures that, for now, Nigerian and Chinese alike still labour against the kindred sightlines of whiteness: English linguistic capital and Euro-American cultural capital.

Theorizing from Africa-Asia then is an intervention with the aim to understand the future of inequality, inclusivity, and innovation through an ethnographic and conceptual decentering of Euro-America in our contested world.