AIUTI CINESI IN AFRICA; UN CASO DI MUTUO INTERESSE DELLA SOCIETÀ O DEL DONATORE?

The debate on whether aid improves developmental outcomes in recipient countries remains a pertinent issue in development economics. Recent studies have established that the issue of the effectiveness of aid is also dependent on the motivation and objectives of a donor when allocating aid. Not only do recipient interests play a role in aid allocation but also political motivations and commercial self-interests of the donor and hence aid may prove to be effective either from the recipient side but also in fulfilling the donor's objectives which at times may not be altruistic. The current study is an empirical investigation that focused on foreign aid allocations to Africa and compares the motives for the provision of aid between an emergent aid donor country, China, and an established multilateral donor World Bank. As a result of the differences in the nature of the World Bank and Chinese aid data different estimation techniques are used for each of them. To capture the determinants of World Bank allocation, fixed effects methods are used. To capture the probability of selection and the factors that affect allocation, a Twostep Heckman is performed on the Chinese dataset. A Two stage model is used for robustness checks. The observed selection patterns indicate that on average China combines commercial interests and recipient needs in its first stage decision of who to select for aid. However, after selection, China does not consider recipient needs but focuses on commercial interests in its decision of how much aid to give. When compared with World Bank, the results validate the hypothesis that China implements a non-interference aid strategy that does not account for governance or institutional framework. Governance indicators are not a significant factor in both stages of aid allocation whilst for the World Bank governance indicators are a significant factor in explaining aid allocation. We argue that the aid strategy of China should not be seen with the same lens as traditional donors. Even though the strategy considers the social needs of poor recipient countries, this is not its primary objective or its main focus. The strategy's main aim is to enhance commercial corporation and economic trade by providing to African countries funds for infrastructure and commercial projects and on the other hand leveraging itself to benefit from Africa's resource endowments through exports in order to meet its own resource needs