Africa’s Economic Growth Convergence: The Story of the China-Africa Trade

This study explored Africa’s economic growth convergence under the auspices of the China-Africa Trade relationship. The analytical framework was based on the on generalized estimating equations (GEE) and the Driscoll-Kraay (1998) estimator for 49 African countries over the period 1992 to 2017. The data analysis indicates that no evidence of unit root with cross-sectional dependence, but there was evidence of cointegration, which suggests that in the long-run the China-Africa trade relations in conjunction with population characteristics and investment in education and technology can be treated as the long-run forcing variables explaining economic growth in Africa. In addition, there is strong evidence of conditional growth convergence driven by factors such as the China-Africa trade relations, investment in education and technological innovation. The significance of the China-Trade relations on Africa’s potential to converge to higher-income state suggest the need to improve upon the trade policy arrangements between China and