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This study analyzes the evolution of Africa's degree of economic integration with China from 1993 to 2019. The study period encompasses a number of China-Africa bilateral economic treaties, which the literature claims are prolific and have significantly strengthened Africa's degree of economic integration with China. We develop a theoretical argument that, if this assertion holds, the integration indicator must reflect a long-run upward trend that is less obstructed by noise. To validate this argument, we use a wavelet approach and find no evidence necessitating failure to reject the null hypothesis of no periodicity, suggesting that the integration indicator was statistically noisy over the study period. This finding suggests that interpreting the evolution of China-Africa economic integration primarily through bilateral economic pacts can be deceptive. The interpretation should instead be exploratory in nature to unpack some hidden motivations associated with this integration. Our preliminary investigation revealed that the Angola Model is primarily driving China-Africa economic integration. Therefore, it is plausible to argue that China-Africa economic integration is perpetuated to exploit natural resources rather than to enhance hard infrastructure development in Africa, as purported in the literature.

This paper examines how FDI from China, US, EU and the rest of Asia can transmit to sub-Sahara Africa's growth through human capital development for the period (2003-2012). We utilize the education index developed by the UNDP to proxy for the quality of human capital. Using the PTR model, our results show that the human capital threshold level required to absorb knowledge embodied in all FDI sources is 0.51 years in terms of educational attainment. Nevertheless, only FDI from the EU can enhance sub-Sahara Africa's growth through the development of less-skilled stock of human capital (less than 0.51 years). The impact of the latter turns negative and insignificant as the quality of human capital required to absorb knowledge spillovers increases beyond 0.51 years. For other FDI sources, 0.51 years demonstrates a sign-change threshold due to the regime shift from positive to negative. While our findings reveal that Africa is short of quality human capital stock required to absorb advanced knowledge embodied in FDI from both its traditional and emerging investors, it can be argued that the knowledge spillover effects depend on the technicalities and capital intensity of the economic sectors targeted by FDI sources. Based on the EU's result, it could be possible that the knowledge spillover effects in Africa can be effective in less industrialized sectors.

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This study examines comparatively the growth effects of FDI from China, the European Union, the US and the rest of Asia in Sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2003–2012. We develop theoretical arguments from the existing literature to show that differences in FDI data sources, methodological and econometric approaches may be part of the explanation for mixed findings of previous empirical studies, precisely on the growth effects of Chinese FDI in Africa. Our results using bilateral FDI data compiled by UNCTAD, the FDI-augmented version of the Solow growth model and the 2SLS estimator indicate a significantly negative direct impact of Chinese FDI on growth in Sub-Saharan Africa while the impact of other FDI sources is statistically insignificant. JEL Classification: B22, E22, F43