World Bank Procurement · The Africa Record · MDB Reform Platform
Follow the Money: $32.5 Billion of World Bank-Financed Contracts in Africa Went to Overseas Companies
Who captures World Bank contract awards in Sub-Saharan Africa, FY2020–FY2026.
A contract is counted as domestic where the supplier’s registered economy matches the borrowing country, and foreign where it does not. The measure answers a single question: for every dollar of contracts that African borrowing finances, how much is won by African firms, and how much flows abroad? It describes where value accrues — not value-for-money, execution quality, or development outcome, and it should not be read as doing so.
One caution, and it runs in a specific direction. Chinese contractors very commonly register a local subsidiary in the country where they work — CGC Nigeria, CGC Côte d’Ivoire, China Jiangxi (Ghana), Yangtse River — and the data record these as domestic. So the 41 percent domestic figure is overstated, and China’s 23 percent is understated. Reclassifying only the firms whose names are visibly Chinese — USD 0.74 billion across 204 contracts — already moves domestic capture to about 39 percent and China’s share to about 25 percent. That is a floor: Chinese firms that register under a purely local name are not detectable here, so the genuinely local share is lower still, and the true Chinese share higher. One award has been excluded as a clear source-data error (see footnote).
The World Bank recorded USD 54.6 billion of contract awards across its two Sub-Saharan Africa regions between FY2020 and FY2026 — 123,673 awards, 44 percent of the Bank’s global procurement value and the largest regional share of any region. Firms based in the borrowing country won USD 22.2 billion of it: 41 percent. The other 59 percent was won by foreign suppliers.
The single largest beneficiary is not African. Chinese firms won USD 12.66 billion — 23 percent of all regional contract value, more than every African supplier economy combined except Nigeria — on roughly 859 contracts averaging USD 14.7 million each, against USD 0.35 million for everyone else. A further 10 percent flows through UN agencies acting as procurement intermediaries, concentrated in fragile states. The analysis does not argue that foreign capture is wrong; it shows that the build-side of the Bank’s largest regional portfolio accrues, in the majority, to firms outside the borrowing economy — a distribution that sits uneasily with the Bank’s stated emphasis on country systems and domestic markets.
Complete analysis with the 46-country annex, the sector and procurement-type breakdown, the China contract-size asymmetry in full, and the data notes. First of a two-part procurement series; the global study follows.
Finding 1: A Minority Stays
Across the regions of the World Bank, domestic capture is the majority position — globally, 56 percent of contract value is won by firms in the borrowing country. Sub-Saharan Africa is the exception. Its two regions are the only ones where local firms win less than half of the value their own borrowing finances, and they sit at the bottom of every regional comparison.
The 59 percent that leaves does not leave evenly. Broken down by who wins it, the regional total divides into four parts — and the foreign share is dominated by one country.
Finding 2: The Single Largest Beneficiary
Chinese firms are the largest single source of supply to the region by a wide margin. Their USD 12.66 billion is more than three times the next economy and exceeds the combined total of every African supplier economy except Nigeria. The concentration is starkest per contract: China won its share across only 859 awards averaging USD 14.7 million each, against roughly USD 0.35 million for everyone else — a ratio of more than forty to one. This is consistent with Chinese participation being weighted toward a small number of very large civil-works contracts rather than broad participation across the portfolio. Of the USD 12.66 billion, the overwhelming majority is civil works, where Chinese firms account for an estimated 39 percent of all regional value.
| Borrower | Value | Domestic | Largest external supplier | China share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nigeria | $4.27bn | 72% | China | 12% |
| Tanzania | $3.69bn | 35% | China | 55% |
| Ethiopia | $3.62bn | 45% | China | 28% |
| Mozambique | $2.89bn | 37% | China | 22% |
| Congo, Dem. Rep. | $2.85bn | 37% | China | 26% |
| Madagascar | $2.27bn | 43% | China | 31% |
| Côte d’Ivoire | $2.23bn | 50% | China | 30% |
| Kenya | $2.09bn | 48% | China | 39% |
| Ghana | $1.42bn | 73% | UN agencies | 6% |
Finding 3: Two Africas at the Bottom
Domestic capture ranges from 73 percent in Ghana to 4 percent in South Sudan. The countries at the bottom of the table share a low capture rate but divide into two groups that differ entirely in who the beneficiary is — a distinction the headline number hides.
Fragile & conflict-affected states
Capture is lowest, and the value that leaves flows mainly to UN agencies acting as implementing intermediaries, not commercial contractors. South Sudan retains just 4 percent of USD 690 million; Chad 33 percent; Somalia 37 percent.
Resource & infrastructure economies
Capture is low because the dominant external supplier is Chinese state construction, winning large works on roads, power and water. Angola retains 27 percent; Tanzania 35 percent; Mozambique 37 percent.
What This Means
None of this establishes that foreign capture is a failure. Large civil works often exceed domestic contracting capacity; the Bank’s procurement rules are open and nationality-blind by design; and a firm that wins a competitive international tender has, on the face of it, earned the work. A high foreign-capture rate may reflect a thin domestic construction sector as much as anything about the procurement itself.
What the data do establish is a distributional fact. Sovereign African borrowers carry the debt and the guarantee; a majority of the resulting contract value is realised outside their economies, and the build-side is dominated in the works category by the state enterprises of a single external country. Whether that distribution is consistent with the institution’s objectives for local capacity is a question the procurement record raises but cannot, on its own, resolve. This analysis is descriptive, and is offered as a companion to the wider examination of delivery on the Bank’s Africa platform: where that work asks what the portfolio achieves, this note asks a narrower and more answerable question — who is paid to build it.
USD 54.6 billion in World Bank contract awards across Sub-Saharan Africa since 2020. Firms in the borrowing country won 41 percent; foreign suppliers 59 percent. Chinese firms alone won 23 percent — USD 12.66 billion — on contracts averaging USD 14.7 million, forty times the size of everyone else’s. UN agencies channelled a further 10 percent, concentrated in fragile states.
African firms win barely over a third of the contract value their own governments’ borrowing finances. The single largest external beneficiary is not a shareholder, not a donor, and not African: it is Chinese state construction. That is the distribution behind the World Bank’s largest regional portfolio.
The 46-country annex. Sector and procurement-type breakdown. The China contract-size asymmetry. Full data notes and the excluded-record explanation.