In early December 2015, Chinese and African officials met in Johannesburg at the sixth Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) meeting. The 2015 FOCAC summit took place amid news reports of China's economic slowdown, and concerns over how Africa would be impacted. In this policy brief, Janet...

When, why, and how are Chinese banks really financing African development? This policy brief presents CARI researchers' analysis of Chinese loans in Africa, drawing from data collected and cleaned by CARI since 2007. Between 2000 and 2014, the Chinese government, banks and contractors extended...

In a thoroughly researched piece, Brautigam, Tang, and Xia offer a preliminary analysis of the nature of Chinese manufacturing investments in Africa, focusing predominantly on four countries -- Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016, they...

As China is poised to become the world's largest creditor, concerns about debt sustainability have grown. Yet considerable confusion exists over what is likely to happen when a government runs into trouble repaying its Chinese loans. In this paper, the authors draw on CARI data to review the...

In the past two years, news headlines have periodically speculated that African borrowers are at risk of losing their sovereign assets to Chinese lenders. In this policy brief, the authors explore what is known about the legal aspects of Chinese lending, including the waiver of sovereign...

Zambia's debt difficulties hit headlines in November 2020 when the country defaulted on its Eurobond payments. In August 2021 a new president, Hakainde Hichilema, took office, facing a debt burden that had never been fully transparent to Zambia's public and the world. In this Policy Brief, CARI...

The first edition of the China-Africa Economic Bulletin provides a comprehensive overview of the key channels of China-Africa economic engagement over the last decade, with a focus on shifting economic trends in the past five years. The collapse of global commodity prices beginning in 2014, tied...

The 7th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) will be held in Beijing from September 3 to 4, 2018. Since 2000, the FOCAC has been held every three years. It serves as the official summit between the Chinese president and African heads of state, and results in major policy and financing...

From modest beginnings in 1960, China has recently become a highly visible actor in Africa's lending landscape. African borrowers have built roads, installed electrical grids, and modernized their airports with Chinese finance. Yet when commodity prices and growth rates began to tumble in 2015,...

China's lending to Africa remained significant in 2019, but its nature is changing. Chinese financiers have committed US$ 153 billion to African public sector borrowers between 2000 and 2019. At least 80 percent of these loans financed economic and social infrastructure projects: mainly...