Replication Data for: Uncovering African Agency: Non-State Actors and Sino-Ghana Relations

The burgeoning ‘ChinAfrica’ debates often fail to consider questions of African agency
and in particular, the role played by civil society organizations (CSOs), the media and
local groupings to give greater voice to African agency in Sino-African relations.
Drawing on qualitative methods (interviews and content analysis), the study examines
the relationship and focuses primarily on the case of Ghana to investigate how CSOs
and the media engage, negotiate, influence, and resist Chinese actors' involvement in
Africa. The findings posit that both Ghanaian state and non-state actors make efforts to
influence and shape their engagement with the Chinese. Significantly, the media and
CSOs, local community and private groupings exert greater agency and prompt state-
level agency in Sino-African relations. Strikingly, it is revealed that while the media are
more proactive, some local communities are sometimes complicit in the whole attempt
at challenging and exposing Chinese illegal activities in Ghana, especially in the mining
and retail sectors. This is because they are either employees of or have interest in
Chinese businesses as shareholders and therefore conceal information regarding
Chinese illegal activities.