China’s Development Finance and African Infrastructure Development

With its policy banks, China has become the largest source of official development finance in the world. This chapter examines the factors behind the significant increase in China’s ‘market share’ in African infrastructure development, and the issues and opportunities this presents for wider development cooperation in infrastructure sectors across Africa. The study addresses four questions: (i) Why has China been so competitive in this domain over the last two decades? (ii) How do China’s concepts, institutions, and policies differ from those of established sources of official development finance? (iii) What is the impact on development concepts, vocabulary, and practice at the level of the G20 and the multilateral development banks? and (iv) What is the impact on infrastructure development cooperation and finance in Africa? The study argues that Chinese entrepreneurialism in development finance has stirred up the established development finance system, generating constructive new rivalries alongside new cooperative learning opportunities.