SupChina published on 15 April 2022 an analysis titled "How Private Chinese Companies Are Winning in Africa" by Anzetse Were.
The article draws heavily on the Ernst and Young Attractiveness Report for Africa in 2021. It also highlights the confusion in the amount of Chinese FDI in Africa. In recent years, China may well be the largest single bilateral source of FDI in Africa, but not at the levels cited by Ernst and Young (EY) data.
Comment: According to this article, using EY data, at $70.6 billion China was by far the largest source of FDI to Africa during the five-year period 2016-2020. The second largest was the UAE at $23.8 billion and third largest the United States at $23.7 billion. But the government of China announced that as of 2019 FDI stock in Africa TOTALED only $49 billion. The China-Africa Research Initiative website shows that Chinese flows to Africa for the same five-year period totaled about $19 billion, well under the $70.6 billion number. The EY figures for the US and UAE also appear to be excessively high.
