A CGD working paper and recent event on Chinese development aid to Africa is covered in Quartz.
point in favor of his case: There’s no real knowledge of how much development finance China is lavishing on Africa because the country won’t disclose the figures. Independent yearly estimates range from $1.4 billion to as much as $18 billion.
Without transparency, it’s hard for anyone to assess whether China is on a massive resource grab—with China’s state-owned companies sidelining locals, foreign multinationals and good government reformers—or just deploying more traditional efforts to improve diplomatic ties in the hopes that commercial opportunities follow.
Now a comprehensive new study has found some $75 billion in unrecorded development projects between 2000 and 2011—and some $6.3 billion in aid flows each year. The money ranges from direct grants funding projects from dams to stadiums, to deals to finance and support natural resource exploration. For example, in 2006, Nigeria gave China oil drilling licenses in exchange for a $4 billion loan to build infrastructure.
The undocumented billions resonate because of accusations that Chinese aid is making it harder for more transparent (usually Western) donors to push for human rights and democratic reforms, and is simply designed to smooth the path to resource extraction. Critics site cases like Angola, where the government was able to turn down an IMF loan that required more transparency about oil revenue thanks to an interest-free loan from China’s Export-Import bank.
China has rebutted these criticisms firmly. Like Venezuela, India and Saudi Arabia, it refuses to join the Development Assistance Committee, which promulgates global standards for measuring and assessing development finance, saying it is a peer to the developing nations, not a donor. (Critics like Sanusi are starting to disagree).