China’s grand plan of infrastructure investment in Africa has recently been overshadowed by reports of civil protests and violent attacks. We present new evidence on the local economic and social impacts of Chinese infrastructure aid from 2002 to 2019. Exploiting panel data at the level of the 0.1° grid cell (around 11km×11km) over the entire African continent, our empirical strategy combines matching with an event study approach to trace changes in nightlight, protests, and violent conflicts outcomes in gridcells with Chinese-financed infrastructure projects relative to suitable control ones. We find that the construction of these projects leads to a 15% increase in nightlight intensity, 6.8% increase of employment probability, 1.4% decrease in violent conflicts incidence but a 5% inc...[ Read more ]

China’s grand plan of infrastructure investment in Africa has recently been overshadowed by reports of civil protests and violent attacks. We present new evidence on the local economic and social impacts of Chinese infrastructure aid from 2002 to 2019. Exploiting panel data at the level of the 0.1° grid cell (around 11km×11km) over the entire African continent, our empirical strategy combines matching with an event study approach to trace changes in nightlight, protests, and violent conflicts outcomes in gridcells with Chinese-financed infrastructure projects relative to suitable control ones. We find that the construction of these projects leads to a 15% increase in nightlight intensity, 6.8% increase of employment probability, 1.4% decrease in violent conflicts incidence but a 5% increase in the incidence of protests. Further, we show that the protest effects are limited to regions occupied by ethnic groups less represented or excluded by the local governments, despite more considerable local economic benefits in these regions. The protest effects are also larger for projects that hire more Chinese workers, proxied by project type and local malaria exposure. The results have important implications for foreign in-vestors in the context of ever-deepening globalization, highlighting the importance of understanding local political and cultural contexts.