The Impact Of China On Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) Economic Growth

Increasing numbers of Chinese companies are developing connections in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with the aim of increasing trade between China and SSA. Questions about how to deal with this development and its consequences are being raised.Although SSA's trade with China is relatively small by comparison with its trade with the industrialized countries, it has grown very rapidly, especially since 2001. Is there a danger of overestimating the historic and present impact, and underestimating the potential future impact of China on SSA?A synthetic framework for assessing the impact of China on SSA involves three primary channels of transmission: Trade, FDI/production and aid, and requires focusing on the complementary-competitive dimension of impacts and on both the direct and indirect impacts.Since these varied impacts are unevenly felt within and between countries, as well as between the different channels, it is important to maintain a comprehensive perspective if the opportunities are to be maximized and the threats minimized in such a way as to sustain poverty alleviation and to enhance income distribution.From China-end, the thrust to SSA reflects a mixture of narrowly defined economic impacts and broader geo-strategic concerns, including with regard to China's long term energy and resource-security.It involves an assortment of public and private actors, sometimes acting independently, and sometimes in concert.From SSA-end, growing links with China genuinely reflect a combination of widely defined economic interests.Nowadays, Africa is economically the poorest continent and the most politically unstable however the African continent is naturally gifted with abundant natural resources and manpower.Today's Africans are finding ways to replace that reputation by adopting solid strategies to rebuild the continent and improving the economic growth of the continent is one of the main goals.China has shared with SSA similar historical and economical experiences for many years and today they are both facing the common task in safeguarding peace and economy again.One big inspiration of SSA working on economic development is that although China is still a developing country, it has taken a significant step that led it to an incredible economical growth for the past two decades.The presence of China in SSA has been of a great importance so far in the state of trade relations, in import and export markets and investment in SSA.The goal of this thesis is to analyze concretely factors that determine both present and potential China's impact in SSA concerning the matter of economic growth.