Date of Award:

5-2026

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Political Science

Committee Chair(s)

Jia Li

Committee

Jia Li

Committee

Anna Pechenkina

Committee

Diego Romero

Abstract

Over the past two decades, China’s rapid expansion of aid and investment throughout sub-Saharan Africa has raised questions about how the United States responds to growing competition in the region. While the impact of China’s aid has been the subject of considerable study, far less attention has been given to how other donors shift their strategies to adjust. This thesis asks a simple but rather consequential question: does the US change how it gives aid in Africa in response to China’s ever-growing footprint? 

With data from 54 African countries, I find that the United States does not attempt to directly compete with China by shifting aid into the same sectors. It instead responds by adjusting its institutions such that a growing portion of its aid, in reaction to rising Chinese aid, goes via non-governmental channels instead of recipient governments. These findings suggest that U.S.-China rivalry in Africa is much less about outspending each other and more about how aid is delivered, restructuring the politics of development in the region.

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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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