Financing African urban infrastructure: China’s role and its implications

China has become a major financier of African infrastructure, yet its impacts on urban development remain underexplored. This paper examines the project characteristics, financial arrangements, and planning implications of Chinese-financed infrastructure in six African cities: Addis Ababa, Kinshasa, Lagos, Luanda, Lusaka, and Nairobi. We find that most Chinese commitments are directed toward transportation and social infrastructure, financed primarily through loans negotiated with national agencies rather than city authorities, and with varying degrees of concessionality. While these flows expand the pool of resources available for urban infrastructure development, they have yet to strengthen city-level fiscal autonomy, revenue generation, or planning capacity. Instead, Chinese urban infrastructure finance tends to reinforce centralized governance logics and create long-term dependencies due to tied lending and state-driven modalities. The recent shift toward models such as public-private partnerships, coupled with debt distress of many African governments and intensifying global geopolitical competition, further complicates Africa’s urban infrastructure futures. These findings highlight the need for stronger frameworks of financial governance and coordinated planning to ensure that external resources contribute to just, resilient, and adaptive African urban development.