Last week we had a flurry of email requests from reporters who wanted to ask us about the comparative Africa foreign direct investment (FDI) data on China and the US posted on our SAIS-CARI data page. Someone at the BBC had noticed that in 2023, US annual flows of FDI surpassed China's for the first time in a decade. The BBC didn't reached out to us for a comment, but when other reporters piled onto the story, we posted the 2024 data. In 2024, China's annual flows of FDI reached US$3.37 billion, while US FDI flows were negative, at --US$2.02 billion. This means that across the board, in 2024 US firms were selling off equity rather than investing. However, it's important to remember that for both the US and China, FDI data is notoriously incomplete. For example, Mauritius features as a top five investment location for the US and for China. This reflects not the country's stellar opportunities (though they may be present) but the maturation of its role as an offshore financial center. What this means is that any investment from China or the US that comes via Mauritius will not register as "US" or "Chinese" in global data, but as "Mauritian". Traditionally, Chinese firms prefer to invest via subsidiaries in Hong Kong, which is also an offshore financial center, while US firms use the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, among others.
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