Development Reimagined’s China Africa Climate Action Tracker is an interactive database tracing China’s climate footprint in African countries since the announcement of the China-Africa Climate Declarations during the 8th FOCAC in Nov 2021, with regular updates leading up to the end of 2024.
Trends: 155 projects in total, over half in progress
With FOCAC 9 held in Beijing successfully in September 2024, a new peak occurred during Q3 2024. From FOCAC 8 until the end of 2024, 155 climate projects with Chinese contributions in Africa were tracked in 3 years.
By the end of the tracker, over half of the projects are beyond contract-signed status, with 27% in progress, 23.9% achieved “operation ready”
Capacity: 40 GW installed renewable energy capacity on their way
Renewable Energy projects are a domain as always, contributing to 65.8% of the total with 102 projects. Significantly, if all renewable energy projects are installed, over 40 GW of green energy will be generated on the continent.
Destinations: expanding across the continent
There are 41 African countries involved, following the top 1 destination Nigeria(14) , Kenya(12) and Zambia(12) are equally popular, seeing fast growth especially in next half of 2024.
The top destination Nigeria has launched 14 projects, with 6 already in operation ready and 4 receiving investment from China, making it a leading position in China-Africa green cooperations. Meanwhile, Chinese EV bus supplier Yutong, also launched its very first EV bus project in Nigeria in 2023, making it a significant case among the 5 clean transportation projects.
As the host of the first Africa Climate Summit, Kenya is proactively developing its green future. Among its 12 projects, 41.7% are climate-friendly infrastructure, and 25% are clean technology solutions, making it different from the average trends where renewable energy domain the Chinese engagements. Chinese cleantech leaders, such as Huawei and BYD, are proactively providing innovative local solutions in the country.
Zambia, the new-comer top 2 candidate, has shown significant growth in the past 6 months. 5 out of Zambia’s 12 tracked projects were reached in Q3 of 2024, revealing it’s speeding up to this green race in the challenge of severe energy deficit.
Chinese footprints: EPCs are still a domain, but more finance contributions
Among the 155 projects, 122 projects’s EPCs are delivered by Chinese companies. As traditional hydropower project developers, Power China Group, Energy China Group, and their branches still dominate the EPC deliveries.
Among them, there are 25 “EPC+Finance” projects, meaning they also received funding (including investment, loans and aid) from China.
Finance source: equally strong efforts from both China and Africa
Regarding finance portfolio in particular, in the 98 projects that revealed details, the Tracker found 60 are financed by African entities and 57 projects received funding from China, in different types including investment, loans and aid.
China Exim Bank and China Development Bank, the major lenders to provide infrastructure projects finance in Africa, only contributed 4 and 3 separately, revealing that loans are no longer trending in China and Africa’s climate engagements.
Among the 98 projects, almost 37% of projects are achievements of multilateral development funders, including UN agencies and MDBs.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions : yikefu@developmentreimagined.com
