How much has China invested in Africa? I just received a slightly breathless invitation to an event to be held at the Ritz-Carlton in Beijing, which led off with this statement: "China's investment in Africa has increased a staggering 30-fold since 2005, with 2,000 Chinese firms now present in 50 African
countries."
Really?
Let's look first at the math. Here are the annual official figures for Chinese investment in Africa from MOFCOM:
Chinese FDI Flows to Africa (US$ million)
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
392 520 1574 5491 1439 2112 3173 2520
Source: MOFCOM. This data has problems, as I've noted here before, although many of these problems are also shared by other countries' official FDI data, And the leap from $392 million to $2520 million is not "a staggering 30 fold" increase, but a factor of 6.
Let's look at accumulated FDI figures:
Chinese FDI Stock in Africa (US$ billion)
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
1.60 2.56 4.46 7.80 9.33 13.04 16.24 21.23
Source: MOFCOM. The figure for 2012 is higher by a factor of 13, compared with 2005.
The most recent white paper on China-Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation noted that between 2009 to 2012, China's direct investment in Africa grew at an annual rate of 20.5%. This is a brisk clip, but I'm not sure I'd call it a "staggering" rate.
How many Chinese companies are active in Africa? The figure on 2000 firms in 50 African countries comes from China's Ministry of Commerce. More precise numbers that I have from MOFCOM state that 2372 investments have gone through the required approvals for Africa, as of March 2013. Some firms will have multiple projects. On the other hand, it probably doesn't include a number of small enterprises that fly under the radar -- including all the Chinese shops -- so the true number of "firms" is undoubtedly higher.
Really?
Let's look first at the math. Here are the annual official figures for Chinese investment in Africa from MOFCOM:
Chinese FDI Flows to Africa (US$ million)
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
392 520 1574 5491 1439 2112 3173 2520
Source: MOFCOM. This data has problems, as I've noted here before, although many of these problems are also shared by other countries' official FDI data, And the leap from $392 million to $2520 million is not "a staggering 30 fold" increase, but a factor of 6.
Let's look at accumulated FDI figures:
Chinese FDI Stock in Africa (US$ billion)
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
1.60 2.56 4.46 7.80 9.33 13.04 16.24 21.23
Source: MOFCOM. The figure for 2012 is higher by a factor of 13, compared with 2005.
The most recent white paper on China-Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation noted that between 2009 to 2012, China's direct investment in Africa grew at an annual rate of 20.5%. This is a brisk clip, but I'm not sure I'd call it a "staggering" rate.
How many Chinese companies are active in Africa? The figure on 2000 firms in 50 African countries comes from China's Ministry of Commerce. More precise numbers that I have from MOFCOM state that 2372 investments have gone through the required approvals for Africa, as of March 2013. Some firms will have multiple projects. On the other hand, it probably doesn't include a number of small enterprises that fly under the radar -- including all the Chinese shops -- so the true number of "firms" is undoubtedly higher.
5 comments:
I know those figures ...
but in my eyes they are pretty worthless.
Even if we take the Chinese figures at face value, for the year 2011 for example, "big" China is ranked after " small" Malaysia, both in terms of FDI as in Stock invested in Africa...
More interesting is to find out which groups and individuals are behind those numbers ...
So, to come back on China, to find out how much FDI from "Malaysia" originated from Chinese groups or individuals?
And why do they use "Malaysia" ?
Is it because so it appears to be more neutral? For tax reasons, or because they have no confidence in the Chinese system?
dan
Hi Deborah,
What do you think of the reliability of AidData's "Tracking Chinese Development Finance to Africa" (http://china.aiddata.org/) data, especially versus The Heritage Foundation's Global Investment Tracker?
Regards
Dean
I don't think much of it. But it's also not comparable with Heritage, which is tracking FDI and large construction projects carried out (but not necessarily financed) by Chinese firms. AidData has all kinds of information, and they try to differentiate the different kinds of Chinese finance, but their ostensible purpose was to track aid flows.
p.s. I have commented on the AidData effort, several times, on this blog, e.g. http://www.chinaafricarealstory.com/2013/05/aiddata-why-it-is-not-wikipedia.html
Wow, I clearly missed that! Thanks for the reply.
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