Working Paper
12

'Ground-Truthing' Chinese Development Finance in Africa: Field Evidence from South Africa and Uganda

Date Published

Aug 1, 2015

Authors

Edwin Muchapondwa, Daniel Nielson, Bradley Parks, Austin M. Strange, Michael J. Tierney

Publisher

Citation

Muchapondwa, Edwin, Daniel Nielson, Bradley Parks, Austin M. Strange and Michael J. Tierney. 2015. 'Ground-Truthing' Chinese Development Finance in Africa: Field Evidence from South Africa and Uganda. AidData Working Paper #12. Williamsburg, VA: AidData at William & Mary. 

Update: A revised version of this paper has been published in the Journal of Development Studies.

Abstract

A new methodology, Tracking Underreported Financial Flows (TUFF), leverages open-source information on development finance by non-transparent, non-Western donors. If such open-source methods prove to be valid and reliable, they can enhance our understanding of the causes and consequences of development finance from non-transparent donors including, but not limited to, China. But open-source methods face charges of inaccuracy. In this study we create and field-test a replicable ‘ground-truthing’ methodology to verify, update, and improve open-source data with in-person interviews and site visits in Uganda and South Africa. Ground-truthing generally reveals close agreement between open-source data and answers to protocol questions from informants with official roles in the Chinese-funded projects. Our findings suggest that open-source data collection, while limited in knowable ways, can provide a stronger empirical foundation for research on development finance.

Funding: The authors thank United Nations University-WIDER for providing the funding needed to make this research possible.

Featured Authors

Dan Nielson

Dan Nielson

Professor and Associate Chair of Political Science at Brigham Young University

Bradley C. Parks

Bradley C. Parks

Executive Director

Austin Strange

Austin Strange

Assistant Professor, University of Hong Kong

Mike Tierney

Mike Tierney

Co-Director of the Global Research Institute and Hylton Professor of Government and International Relations at the College of William & Mary

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