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Chinese investors focus on West Africa amid decline in total loans
- Research shows Chinese loans to African countries fell 37 per cent during pandemic years
- Investments in West Africa rise as loans to countries traditionally in the top 10 borrowers remain flat
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Chinese loans to Africa have decreased significantly in recent years, according to a US university.
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In 2021 and 2022, China made 16 new loan commitments worth a combined total of US$2.22 billion to African countries, signifying two consecutive years of lending to Africa below US$2 billion, according to new data compiled by Boston University’s Global Development Policy Centre.
In its Chinese Loans to Africa Database, the centre tracked seven loans worth US$1.22 billion that Chinese lenders signed with African countries in 2021 and another nine loans amounting to US$994.48 million last year. However, there was a drop in both the number and value of loans compared with the pre-pandemic years.
In a policy paper accompanying the loan data, the centre said that from the pre-pandemic years between 2017 and 2019 to the pandemic years (2020-2022), loan averages dropped by 37 per cent from US$213.03 million to US$135.15 million.
“This trend is more significant in terms of the number of loans, plummeting from 184 to 32 in the subsequent pandemic years,” the study noted.
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Senegal, Benin, Ivory Coast, Angola, Uganda, Ghana, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were the borrowers in 2021-2022.
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