Uncovering African Leaders’ Perceptions of China’s Belt and Road Initiative

As the volume of its overseas investments has quantifiably grown over the last decade, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become synonymous with the expanding global footprint of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in both media coverage and policy discourse. As a result, plenty of analysis has been done on the supply side of PRC development financing. Still, there is a shortage of evidence-based research on the demand side of BRI, focusing on the PRC’s counterparts in the Global South. Africa particularly stands out for the high share of BRI member countries and the large inflows of PRC-financed development projects, making an interesting case study of BRI effects in recipient countries. In this chapter, we explore leaders’ attitudes towards Beijing and the BRI in the African continent. We use AidData’s BRI Perceptions Survey to glean deeper insights into how African leaders assess the PRC as a development partner, consider the downstream outcomes of PRC-financed development projects (economic, environmental, governance), and their impressions of the BRI and the PRC’s support to their countries amid COVID-19.