China Africa Development Fund Hits 5 Bln USD

Posted on : Thursday, 24th December 2015

The China Development Bank has hit its target of pooling 5 billion U.S. dollars this year in its equity investment fund for investment in Africa, it said on Friday.

It has already allocated or earmarked nearly 3.2 billion U.S. dollars in the China Africa Development Fund (CAD Fund) for more than 80 projects from infrastructure to agriculture to energy resources in 35 African countries.

The bank estimated that these projects will attract Chinese enterprises to invest a further 16 billion U.S. dollars in Africa, creating a million jobs.

The CAD Fund was set up in 2007 to diversify financial vehicles facilitating Chinese investment in Africa. The China Development Bank provided an initial seeding of 1 billion U.S. dollars before adding another 2 billion U.S. dollars in 2012.

China had pumped more than 30 billion U.S. dollars into Africa by the end of 2014, more than 60 times the sum in 2000. The country has pledged to bring that up to some 100 billion U.S. dollars by 2020.