China Lends Less To Africa

So says the Financial Times:

From almost nothing, Chinese banks now make up about one-fifth of all lending to Africa, concentrated in a few strategic or resource-rich countries including Angola, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Zambia. Annual lending peaked at a whopping $29.5bn in 2016, according to figures from the China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, though it fell back in 2019 to a more modest, if still substantial, $7.6bn.

Having dived headlong into the world’s poorest continent, Chinese lenders have grown more cautious as some nations have reached the limit of their borrowing capacity and the prospect of default looms. The IMF lists more than 20 African countries as being in, or at high risk of, debt distress.

In response, lenders, including China Eximbank and China Development Bank, the country’s two main policy banks, have adopted increasingly hardline lending terms. Those conditions, some of which differ markedly from other official creditors, are starting to be tested as pandemic-related economic hardship puts a strain on more indebted African countries.