after accession, arguably affirming the influence of China’s WTO accession on economic and trade outcomes in the developing world and in SSA countries in particular.

The 2002–2007 period showed a remarkable turnaround in the patterns of income, trade, and minerals indicators in the developing world. A unique feature to note during this period is SSA’s growth surge, which averaged 3.53 percent. Yet per capita income increasing modestly from an average of US$2365 during 1996–2001 to US$2699, and trade-GDP shares increasing, albeit modestly, from 62.85 percent to 64.25 percent. GDP shares of resource rents show sizeable improvements: mineral rents increased to 1.05 percent from 0.36 percent, gas rents more than doubled from 0.31 percent to 0.88 percent, and oil rents almost doubled to 11.15 percent from 6.39 percent. There is no doubt that these improvements (especially in income, trade, and GDP shares of mineral rents) overlap with the accession in 2001, a fact that has been attributed to 2002–2008 surges in global mineral prices. Arguably, it is not unreasonable to associate the improved economic, trade, and resource rent indicators to the accession during 2002–2007. For-example, Figure 1 in Appendix I shows a sharp rise in mineral commodities prices post-accession, reaffirming the hypothesis that the accession was associated with the improvement in economic, trade, and resource rent indicators across SSA countries during 2002–2007.

The 2008–2013 period shows the patterns after the on-set of the recent global financial crisis. Except for a decline in income growth and GDP shares of gas rents, SSA countries performed remarkably well, on average, in other indicators during the financial crisis of 2009-10 (China pursued a counter-cyclical fiscal policy, and the fiscal expansion further stimulated its demand for Africa’s commodities). In fact, per capita income and GDP-trade shares increased during this period. Similarly, GDP shares of mineral and oil rents increased over and above the 2002–2007 shares. The patterns of income, trade, and resource rent indicators during 2008–2013 are certainly interesting in their own way. But, as we previously noted, to avoid the contaminating effects of the financial crisis our analysis is confined over 1997–2007 periods.

_B. China–Africa trade relations in perspective_ In order to understand the association between China’s accession and its impact on African economies, we now turn to the trade relations between China and Africa. We present our discussions in two ways. First, we use data on metals and mineral production to show the average patterns of metals and minerals production across African countries during the 1996–2013 period. Similarly, we present the patterns of metals and minerals imports by China during the same period. We have two aims: (i) to show the general patterns of metals and minerals production from Africa and imports by China, and (ii) to infer the behavior of associations from these patterns. Second, we bring to bear the analysis of average trade flows on several commodities between China and Africa. For a meaningful comparison, we break up this analysis into four successive periods: 1990– 1995, 1996–2001, 2002–2007, and 2008–2014. This analysis shows the magnitude of average trade flows between the two trading partners. Our end goal is to empirically document the 6