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2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

13. Twenty-First-Century Chinese-African Hydropower Projects in Perspective

Author : Pon Souvannaseng

Published in: The Political Economy of Hydropower in Southwest China and Beyond

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter discusses the historical shifts and underlying drivers behind the rise of twenty-first-century Chinese-African hydropower development. It locates the basis of these shifts in changes in financing regimes for hydropower projects in Africa; host country governments have pivoted away from dwindling traditional OECD and multilateral development sources of finance and towards new alternative sources of Chinese state-owned commercial lending. The varied hydro-historical trajectories of Uganda, Ghana, and Ethiopia are compared here through an analysis of select project cases in order to demonstrate how and why different contexts have converged on similar outcomes in pivoting to Chinese partnership arrangements. The three cases, respectively, represent private sector, multilateral, and state-led approaches to African dam development which have each ended up resorting to coordinated bilateral Chinese financing mechanisms to provide solutions to rising energy demand and domestic resource constraints. This chapter concludes with common risks and challenges faced by African cases in various contexts.

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previous chapter Hydropower and Sino-Indian Hydropolitics Along the Yarlung-Tsangpo-Brahmaputra

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Title: Twenty-First-Century Chinese-African Hydropower Projects in Perspective
Author: Pon Souvannaseng
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: The Political Economy of Hydropower in Southwest China and Beyond
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-59360-5

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-59361-2

Copyright Year: 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59361-2_13

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