Congratulations, Jessie! Pick a country that China has included in the BRI. Discuss who benefits from what in this relationship and whether BRI projects are politically, economically, and environmentally sustainable in the country. What are the geopolitical implications of this case? Between and , Chinese lenders provided loans to Angola worth One key reason for such controversy is the type of agreement China popularized with Angola in β resources for infrastructure RFI.
The exchange of Chinese infrastructure for African natural resources seemed to formalize an extractive relationship and drew international criticisms of neocolonialism.
In the following analysis, I present a picture of Chinese investment in Angola, wherein China receives oil and geopolitical influence while Angola receives infrastructure and political clout. The relationship between the two countries reflects larger trends in the nature of Chinese lending on the BRI over the years.
I argue that the impacts of BRI financing are often translated through the domestic institutions of a country. In , when the Angolan civil war finally reached its denouement, the country had been ravaged by nearly 30 years of fighting. At this time, Angola had reached out to the international community for the loans it would need to begin rebuilding. However, the IMF was hesitant to bail out Angola due to its poor track record in economic governance.
Elite actors within the MPLA had managed to reap shadowy profits from its oil revenues through Sonangol, but the country itself was heavily in debt with international lenders, owing over 2 billion USD to the Paris Group, with few avenues through which it could pay back these debts. Initially, the IMF agreed with the caveat that Angola would have to reform its oil industry, working on transparency and rooting out corruption. In , it looked as if the MPLA was going to acquiesce to these terms in exchange for the financial aid that it desperately needed to rebuild a war-torn country.
