Transport Infrastructure Connectivity and China–DRC Bilateral Trade Performance: An Empirical Analysis

This paper examines the causal relationship between transport infrastructure connectivity and bilateral trade performance between China and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over the period 2000–2023. Employing a gravity model augmented with infrastructure quality indices, panel data fixed-effects estimations, and vector autoregression (VAR) analysis, we provide robust empirical evidence that improvements in road density, port efficiency, and multimodal connectivity significantly increase bilateral trade flows. Using provincial-level panel data and an instrumental variable (IV) strategy based on historical colonial transport networks as an instrument for contemporary infrastructure quality, our baseline estimates indicate that a 10% increase in infrastructure connectivity raises bilateral trade by 6.8–9.4%, with effects persisting over a 2–3 year horizon. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the trade-enhancing effects are most pronounced for manufactured goods and mining outputs, consistent with Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) sector-specific investment patterns. Our findings survive a battery of robustness checks including alternative infrastructure measures, synthetic control methods, and spatial error corrections. The results carry important policy implications for infrastructure-led development strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa.