Beyond Official Development Assistance: Chinese Development Cooperation and African Agriculture

This book investigates China’s contemporary development cooperation mentality and modality through the case of its agricultural engagement with Africa. It identifies three models, namely traditional agro-aid, innovative agro-aid and agribusiness models, of Chinese current agro-development cooperation with Africa, and unpacks the different models by tracing their historical origins and examining the actual practice based on project-level fieldwork conducted in Mozambique and South Africa. The book provides a preliminary and qualitative evaluation of China’s current agro-development cooperation with Africa, and explains the ‘implementation gaps’ as observed on the ground adopting a public policy approach. It also compares the Chinese way of development cooperation with that of the traditional donors (particularly the OECD-DAC members), and calls for a broadening understanding for international development cooperation that can allow win-win ideology and embrace diversified cooperation forms beyond the official development assistance (ODA).