Why Africa turns to China: colonial legacies and the new politics of development finance

Why have African states increasingly turned to China for development finance? Dominant explanations emphasise China’s strategic ambitions or the material effects of its lending, often overlooking how Western colonial legacies continue to structure African policy choices. This article adopts a decolonial political economy approach, arguing that China–Africa aid relations are shaped by, and represent a response to, enduring radicalised hierarchies and dependencies forged under Western colonial rule and reproduced through global governance. Drawing on 33 semi-structured interviews with senior Zambian policymakers, the article centres African policy voices to examine how colonial legacies shape their interpretations of, and engagement with, Chinese aid. The findings show that Chinese aid has transformed development finance into a contested political arena in which African actors strategically leverage China’s rise to challenge Western-dominated aid regimes, reclaim constrained policy space, and assert greater autonomy. While Chinese development finance remains embedded in global neoliberal logics and can reproduce historical dependencies, it provides African policymakers an alternative source of leverage within an unequal global political economy. By foregrounding African agency, the article advances debates on the changing politics of aid, geopolitics in the Global South and how colonial history continues to influence policy decisions today.