The COFI database includes power-generation projects in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries financed by Chinese corporations and banks that reached financial closure from 2000 to 2020. Types of financing include debt and equity investment, with the latter including greenfield foreign direct investments (FDI) and cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As).

COFI is consolidated using nine source databases using both automated join method in R Studio, and manual joining by analysts. The database includes power plant characteristics data and investment detail data. It captures 430 power plants in 76 BRI countries, including 220 equity investment transactions and 253 debt investment transactions made by Chinese investors. Key data points for financial transactions in COFI include the financial instrument (equity or debt), investor name, amount, and financial close year. Key technical characteristics tracked for projects in COFI include name, installed capacity, commissioning year, country, and primary fuel type.

This project is a collaboration among the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, the Inter-American Dialogue, the China-Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University (CARI), and the World Resources Institute (WRI).

The detailed methodology is given in the World Resources Institute publication “China Overseas Finance Inventory”.