Abstract With an increasingly polycentric humanitarian system, the growing visibility of Chinese humanitarian NGOs in Africa is often reduced to narratives of “aid export” or “soft power”. This study argues instead that their engagement is best understood as a development-prioritizing modality of crisis intervention: it embeds emergency assistance within longer-horizon agendas of capacity building, livelihood restoration, and the provision of foundational public goods, thereby redrawing the practical boundary of the humanitarian–development nexus and sustaining operational legitimacy through boundary work between host-state sovereignty claims and international norms. Methodologically, the study combines (1) continent-wide mapping of project distribution and sectoral profiles (2010–2021), (2) a systematic review of Chinese- and English-language scholarship (2015–2024), and (3) process-tracing evidence from CFPA’s “Brighter Future” intervention in the Palabek refugee settlement in northern Uganda, drawing on survey and interview materials. The findings show pronounced regional clustering and pathway dependence on existing aid and diplomatic infrastructures. At the micro level, a layered and sequenced bundle of cash transfers, agricultural support, and income-generation components can, under specific conditions, advance both livelihood improvements and refugee–host community integration, yet faces structural bottlenecks stemming from implementation delays, input quality, and weak market linkages. The study concludes by deriving implications for debates on localization, the politics of normative universality, and reform trajectories in multilateral humanitarian governance.
Zhao et al. (2026) studied this question.