China's Aid To Africa Benefits Birth Regions of Leaders

AidData published in October 2016 a study titled "Aid on Demand: African Leaders and the Geography of China's Foreign Assistance" by Axel Dreher, Andreas Fuchs, Roland Hodler, Bradley C. Parks, Paul A. Raschky, and Michael J. Tierney.

The study investigates whether China's foreign aid to Africa is particularly prone to capture by political leaders of aid-receiving countries. It examines whether more Chinese aid is allocated to the birth regions of political leaders and regions populated by the ethnic groups to which leaders belong. The results show that when leaders hold power their birth regions receive substantially more funding from China than other subnational regions. The authors conclude that China's foreign aid program has both distributional and developmental consequences for Africa.