Author: Letizia Montinari, Giorgio Prodi.

The role of China as a trading partner of sub-Saharan Africa is assessed using data on bilateral trade from the International Monetary Fund (1999-2007) and a gravity model. Trade with China is found to affect the intra-African market in different ways at different levels of China-Africa exports. Interaction variables are used to disentangle two opposite patterns: sub-Saharan Africa's exports to China have a negative effect on intra-African trade at higher levels of the trade between China and sub-Saharan Africa and a positive effect at lower levels. Oil-exporting countries, China's biggest African trading partners, tend to isolate themselves from the internal African market as their exports to China increase. Conversely, a rise in exports to China from non-oil-exporting countries increases intra-African trade, probably due to a wealth effect. Intra-African market performance is briefly analyzed as a robustness check on the data. The results are interesting, especially those concerning the differences in trade determinants between oil-exporting and non-oil-exporting sub-Saharan countries.