The Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame published in October 2025 a paper titled "Chinese Mining in West Africa: Responding to the Environmental and Social Impacts" by various authors.
The paper proposes national and regional policy recommendations for addressing the detrimental social and environmental impacts of Chinese mining in West Africa.
The Washington Post published in its hard copy edition on 17 April 2025 an editorial titled "Save America's Great Link to Africa."
America's key trade agreement for Africa, the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), is due to expire in September this year unless Congress votes for another extension. The program's future is uncertain because the Trump administration prefers bilateral trade deals over multinational agreements such as AGOA. The editorial makes the case for renewing AGOA.
Peking University published in October 2023 a report titled "A Study on the Effectiveness of China's Sovereign Financing in Africa."
From 2000 to 2020, China provided $160 billion in loans for 1116 projects in 49 African countries. Based on a study of select projects from this list, Peking University concluded that China's loans have a generally positive impact on the economic growth of African nations, and improve the livelihood of the African people. The loans have had a significant impact on education and improved the hard infrastructure of education facilities and the literacy rate. The study also shows that loans generate a positive impact on manufacturing job creation, infrastructure development, and globalization. However, the results indicate a negative impact on agricultural job creation, which could be explained as the result of moving people from agriculture to industries.
The authors noted that the study was limited by the reliability of the data and discrepancy in the accuracy, time dimension, and the statistical caliber of loan data collected among institutions.
The most recent issue of World Development contains an open access study titled "China's Investments in Renewable Energy in Africa: Creating Co-benefits or Just Cashing In?" by Rasmus Lema, Padmasai Lakshmi Bhamidipati, Cecilia Gregersen, Ulrich Elmer Hansen, and Julian Kirchherr.
The purpose of the study is to determine to what extent economic co-benefits are created when renewable-energy projects are developed by Chinese investors in Africa. The authors identify some newly created jobs, linkages generated with actors in local systems of production and training activities involving local staff, but the extent of these benefits is very limited. Overall, the results suggest that policymakers should be wary of overly optimistic expectations when it comes to assessing the co-benefits of renewable energy projects in the context of scarce pre-existing capabilities.
