Chinese commercial creditors have expanded into African markets and established themselves as key development financiers of infrastructure over the past two decades. Cross-border sovereign infrastructure financing often exposes creditors to considerable risk and uncertainty; as a result, much lending in the Chinese context has been provided by policy banks. This paper examines how the entry of Chinese commercial creditors was made possible at the project level, where China’s broader policy directives created enabling conditions but did not determine how individual financing commitments were secured. Drawing on case studies of Ghana and Zambia, which are among the top markets of Chinese commercial creditors, the paper argues that loan agreements between Chinese commercial creditors and sovereign borrowers were co-facilitated by two sets of on-the-ground actors. […]