Does China’s Aid to Ethiopia Promote Exports from Ethiopia to China?

Abstract China has emerged as Ethiopia’s largest bilateral development partner, financing large-scale infrastructure projects under the framework of South–South cooperation and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Conventional wisdom suggests that such aid should facilitate trade by reducing costs, enhancing industrial capacity, and integrating Ethiopia into global markets. This article investigates whether Chinese aid has indeed promoted Ethiopian exports to China. The evidence demonstrates that, despite massive inflows of Chinese aid, Ethiopia’s exports to China remain stagnant and concentrated in a handful of primary commodities. Instead, Chinese aid has primarily fueled Ethiopia’s external debt burden, widened trade imbalances, and reinforced structural asymmetries. Chinese aid has been more effective in creating debt obligations than in promoting Ethiopian export growth.