China’s bilateral trade in Africa: is institutional structure a determinant?

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the institutional structures and other predictors that determine bilateral trade between Africa and China from 1995 to 2017. Design/methodology/approach: In line with the gravity model of trade, institutional, geographical and socio-economic determinants of China’s bilateral trade with 18 African oil/minerals exporting countries are examined by deploying Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood and dynamic bias-corrected least squares dummy variable econometric techniques. Findings: The results indicate that China’s oil/minerals imports from Africa are higher than imports of manufacturing and agricultural goods, and institutional structures indicate that a weak politically stable region with less control of corruption has a discernible effect on trade. Research limitations/implications: Further insight can be gained if the type of manufactured goods being exported to China is examined; this is necessary given that China crowds out Africa’s manufactured goods. Therefore, this study recommends the need for Africa to continually strengthen its institutional structures to stimulate trade from other regions. Originality/value: This study examines the quality of the institutional structures (political stability and corruption) in African oil/minerals exporting countries, considering that China has been alleged for capitalising on Africa’s weak institutional structures to trade with the resource-endowed region. For the first time, the UN COMTRADE HS product-country-partner-year trade data is used to examine on bilateral sector trade China–Africa links rather than proxies used in the studies of Biggeri and Sanfilippo (2009), De Grauwe et al. (2012) and Foad (2011) that did not capture the real trade value.