Impact of China’s Aid on Economic Development in Africa: The Case of Cameroon

Abstract: China’s continuous development aid to Africa over the last few decades has being one of the most contentious developments within the region. Saddled on a spirited economic expansion towards enhancing self reliance capability of African countries, China’s aid to Africa has stroke the chord to world attention, stunning friends and foes alike. While the friends view these numerous aid as lucrative opportunity for both parties, foes of this partnership are fretting over the potential impact of China’s development aids towards enhancing the recipient countries self-reliance capabilities. Issues such as the continuous utilization of Chinese labour and input during the implementation of such projects, has helped to cast doubt on the very sincerity of its good intensions towards attaining mutual benefit and enhancing self reliance within these recipient countries. Despite the growing debate among the friends and foes of this partnership, very few existing literature have investigate the sincerity of China aid towards capacity building with emphasis on Employment Creation and Technology Transfer. There is a dearth of literature dedicated explicitly on indicators of Capacity building such as Employment Creation and Technology Transfer. Amidst this dearth of literature, this research seeks to compliment the few existing literature on the impact of China’s aid towards Capacity building in Africa, by highlighting the case of Cameroon. In order to achieve this, the research explores the China’s aid impact on Cameroon capacity building in respect to Employment Creation and Technology Transfer. Primary data from five semi-structured interviews via email with open-ended questions, as well as secondary data such as China White Paper were used in the analysis of the research. Contrary to previous research findings from the case of Angola, Sudan and Uganda that have both experience some boast towards capacity, same could not be said for Cameroon. The findings gotten for the case of Cameroon portrays the impact of China project aid toward capacity building in Cameroon, is at best, still “insignificant”. Cameroon has been receiving the shorter end of the development stick thus far. In order to change this status-quo so that Cameroon could realize its full potentials, there is the urgent need for reconstitution of the Cameroon political and economical power.