Chinese lending to Africa has fallen sharply, but China isn’t retreating from the continent. Rather, new data from Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center show how a complex mix of global and local factors impacted the Africa-China relationship.
These include the U.S.-China trade war of the Trump era that pushed China towards a domestic-facing dual circulation strategy, the impact of commodity price cycles on African countries’ ability to borrow, and how the COVID-19 pandemic forced these countries to borrow more, just to keep the lights on.
