Chinese Aid and African Development: Exporting Green Revolution

by Deborah Brautigam

Since 1957, more than 45 African countries have received aid from China, yet little about the impact of this assistance is known. Deborah Bräutigam provides the first authoritative account of Chinese aid in rural Africa. The book answers three primary How does Chinese aid differ from that of other donors? What impact has China's aid had on African development? What factors account for the widely divergent outcomes of China's aid? In a methodological tour de force, Bräutigam draws on anthropology, economics, organization theory and political science to explain how changing ideas about development in China shaped the design of its aid, and how domestic politics in African countries influenced its outcome. Based on unpublished documents and extensive interviews in Liberia, Sierra Leone and The Gambia, Bräutigam fills an important gap in our knowledge of China and Africa, and makes a fundamental contribution to out understanding of the relationship between foreign aid and African development.

Hardcover

First published June 22, 1998

About the author

Dr. Deborah Bräutigam has been writing about the fact and fiction of China and Africa; state-building; governance and foreign aid for more than 20 years. Her most recent book, Will Africa Feed China? (Oxford University Press, 2015), sheds light on the contrast between realities, and the conventional wisdom, on Chinese agricultural investment in Africa. She is also author of The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2010). Currently Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy, Director of the International Development Program and founding director of the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), she has also held faculty appointments at American University, Columbia University, the University of Bergen, Norway, and been a senior research fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC. Dr. Bräutigam has twice won the Fulbright research award. She is also a recipient of fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Her research and work with CARI has been funded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the UK Centre for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR), Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). She has served as a consultant for Transparency International, the United Nations, the World Bank, DFID, GIZ, DANIDA, the African Development Bank, and USAID, and has provided commentary to the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Guardian, CNN, NPR, Al-Jazeera, VOA, CCTV, and MSNBC. Her Ph.D. is from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.