Chinese Loans to African Countries Differ from Western Development Loans

Lorenz Meister, Lukas Menkhoff and Annika Westen

DIW Weekly Report, 2023, vol. 13, issue 26/27, 193-200

Abstract: Over the past 20 years, China has granted a conspicuous amount of loans to African countries. New loan data show that compared to Western multilateral loans, Chinese loans have relatively high interest rates and shorter maturities, tend to be highly collateralized, and are volatile over time. Thus, Western loans are generally more likely to be in the economic interest of the borrowing country. Furthermore, Chinese loans are focused on resource-rich countries that undertake fewer anti-corruption efforts, so local policymakers have more opportunities to feather their own nest. Finally, unlike Western loans, Chinese loans are not tied to any economic policy conditions. It seems worth considering for Western lenders to reduce the number and intensity of loan conditions to respect the sovereignty of the borrowing countries.

Keywords: International lending; conditionality; China; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.877538.de/dwr-23-26-1.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwdwr:dwr13-26-1

Access Statistics for this article

DIW Weekly Report is currently edited by Tomaso Duso, Marcel Fratzscher, Peter Haan, Claudia Kemfert, Alexander Kritikos, Alexander Kriwoluzky, Stefan Liebig, Lukas Menkhoff, Karsten Neuhoff, Carsten Schröder, Katharina Wrohlich and Sabine Fiedler

More articles in DIW Weekly Report from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().