SEAS Events

Title: China's Role in Shaping Energy Access in Africa

Abstract:

Energy poverty in sub-Saharan Africa severely hinders economic and social development. Expanding access to modern energy services is not only critical for improving livelihoods across the continent, but also essential to achieving a global low-carbon energy transition. China, as a global leader in clean energy technology manufacturing and critical mineral processing, has become deeply involved in Africa’s energy and mining sectors. Yet, due to the opaque nature of Chinese development finance and investment, there remains limited empirical evidence on China’s strategic motivations, financing patterns, and development impacts.
This dissertation examines China’s role in shaping energy access in Africa through three empirical studies that operate at different scales. The first study investigates the political economy logic underlying China’s overseas development finance by examining the relationship between Chinese development aid and mine acquisitions across sub-Saharan Africa. Using a country-year panel combining data on Chinese finance, mine ownership and properties, and governance conditions, the study provides empirical evidence that Chinese development finance is strategically aligned with access to critical energy-transition and nuclear-relevant minerals, with differentiated use of financial instruments and risk tolerance across mineral types.
The second study evaluates the causal impacts of Chinese-financed energy infrastructure on local electricity access, using Zambia as a case study. Leveraging geocoded data on Chinese-financed energy infrastructure projects combined with satellite-derived measures of electricity access, the chapter employs a spatial event-study design to estimate community-level effects over time. The findings show that Chinese-financed infrastructure leads to modest but statistically significant increases in local electricity access, with effects emerging gradually and varying by infrastructure type and degree of urbanization, highlighting the importance of downstream grid integration and systematic energy planning.
The third study examines how adoption of decentralized solar technologies, which have become increasingly affordable due to global manufacturing scale led by Chinese producers, affects household-level development outcomes in rural Malawi. Using panel household survey data, the chapter shows that solar adoption increases mobile money use and participation in informal savings mechanisms, primarily by enabling reliable at-home phone charging. These results demonstrate how clean technology diffusion can generate important development spillovers even in off-grid contexts.
Together, these studies provide new empirical evidence on how China influences energy access in Africa through financing, infrastructure investment, and technology diffusion. By linking geopolitical incentives, infrastructure deployment, and household-level outcomes, the dissertation advances understanding of China’s role in Africa’s energy transition and its implications for development, resource governance, and energy sovereignty.

Topic: Congyi Dai's Dissertation Defense
Time: Apr 28, 2026 02:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://umich.zoom.us/j/96003221577

Meeting ID: 960 0322 1577
Passcode: energy