Abstract
This paper expands upon a hitherto under-explored finding by Rich and Banerjee’s (2015) model which finds that Taiwan has done comparatively better with non-democracies in Africa. The paper proposes that democratisation makes an African state more responsive to domestic economic imperatives and thus more likely to form relations with the demographically and economically larger People’s Republic of China due to the prospective trade, aid and investment gains to be made once such a switch is affected. Seven case studies conducted over the 2001-2018 period yield results which are in line with this hypothesis.