By Jean-Louis Billon
Note: Translated from French using Google Translate
From the article:
How often when we talk about China in Africa, the clichés, the shortcuts and the lawsuits of intention are never far under cover of a legitimate debate on this new Sino-African situation. Debt is no exception. The announcement at the end of the 7th edition of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Beijing by a promise of 60 billion dollars (51 billion euros) for the development of Africa has much welcomed future recipients that worried the most skeptical about China's growing economic influence in Africa. A thorny subject both for its technical complexity and its very sensitive political dimension.
According to Masood Ahmed, chairman of the think-tank Center for Global Development, China's share has now exceeded the total of the Paris Club, the World Bank and all regional development banks in the debt of poor countries between 2013 and 2016. According to the China Africa Research Initiative, a research laboratory hosted by Johns Hopkins University, at least $ 132 billion has been borrowed by African states since 2000.
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