China's Aid to Africa:Characteristics,Its Role and Challenges ahead

Started from 1956,China's aid to Africa has been playing a very significant role for strengthening Sino-African ties as a whole.Generally speaking,take "the reform and opening-up" policy started from late 1970s as a line of demarcation,China's aid policy to Africa can be divided into two periods in the half century.The driving force of China's aid policy before the line was to strengthen the diplomatic and political ties with African countries.The focus of China's aid policy after the line is to seek mutual economic cooperation and common development.Comparing with the Western approaches,the major characteristics of China's aid policy to Africa are mainly three:the aid is provided with no strings attached,and emphasizing on bilateral aid projects rather than multilateral system,strong focus on "hardware projects" such as physical infrastructure construction rather than "software projects" like research and capacity building.In general,China's aid to Africa has generated effective results and helped a lot for China's involvement in Africa.However,it is also facing new challenges at the moment and future.