Chinese overseas energy finance collapsed to its lowest level since 2008 last year, with its struggling Belt and Road ambitions in the sector relying more heavily on projects in African countries.
More than half of China’s $4.6bn in overseas energy lending went to projects in Africa in 2020, data from Boston University’s Global Energy Finance database show. China’s policy banks funded a gas pipeline in Nigeria, which drove most of the more than $3bn of financing, and smaller projects in Lesotho, Rwanda and the Ivory Coast.
Overall overseas energy finance fell by 43 per cent compared with 2019 and remained far below its level in recent years. Elsewhere, China lent towards projects in Bangladesh, Serbia and Pakistan.
The wider drop in activity, anticipated in part because of the impact of coronavirus, coincided with mounting challenges to China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, which has since 2013 sought to build infrastructure across dozens of…