The Political Economy of Chinese FDI and Spillover Effects in Africa

What are the impacts of Chinese investment in Africa? Is it transforming economic development on the continent? This book is different from many other studies of this issue, as it unpacks the ‘black box’ of technological and learning spillover effects from Chinese firms to others. Rather than using econometric tools, which has now become a standard approach and come with their own set of challenges, the authors investigate the interactions between Chinese investors and African firms in terms of the transfer of technology and learning and explain why such interactions are rare. Only by understanding the reasons behind this rarity can approaches be developed to promote spillovers.