China’s lending to African countries fell substantially before the pandemic hit, according to new research, suggesting lenders became concerned about the sustainability of rising debt levels on the continent.

Chinese lending to African public sector borrowers reached $28bn five years ago, but has dropped since then, falling to just $7bn in 2019 from $9.9bn the year before, according to the figures from the China-Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Johns Hopkins University.

The data, the most comprehensive on China’s lending to Africa, reflect the same trend as separate global data published late last year by researchers at Boston University, which found that China had sharply curtailed overseas lending by its two largest policy banks across all regions.