As the 8th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) conference in Dakar nears, expectations in some quarters are rising that China will once again play the role of financier for African development and COVID-19 mitigation.

At the previous two FOCAC summits, China pledged as much as $60 billion, but officials have been very circumspect this time around and have said little about how much will be committed at this year’s event that will take place at the end of the month. And there’s good reason to believe that the final tally will not be anywhere near as high as previous FOCACs based on the dramatic plunge in lending by China’s official policy banks in recent years.