Twenty-First-Century Chinese-African Hydropower Projects in Perspective

The Export-Import Bank of China provided a $562 million loan to finance construction of the Bui Dam, on the Black Volka River in Ghana. The dam, which flooded part of Bui National Park, is one of dozens of energy projects in developing nations that Chinese development banks have financed over the past decade. Photo: ZSM (Creative Commons)

Part of the International Political Economy Series book series (IPES)

This chapter discusses the historical shifts and underlying drivers behind the rise of twenty-first-century Chinese-African hydropower development. It locates the basis of these shifts in changes in financing regimes for hydropower projects in Africa; host country governments have pivoted away from dwindling traditional OECD and multilateral development sources of finance and towards new alternative sources of Chinese state-owned commercial lending. The varied hydro-historical trajectories of Uganda, Ghana, and Ethiopia are compared here through an analysis of select project cases in order to demonstrate how and why different contexts have converged on similar outcomes in pivoting to Chinese partnership arrangements. The three cases, respectively, represent private sector, multilateral, and state-led approaches to African dam development which have each ended up resorting to coordinated bilateral Chinese financing mechanisms to provide solutions to rising energy demand and domestic resource constraints. This chapter concludes with common risks and challenges faced by African cases in various contexts.