Under the framework of “the Belt and Road” initiative and the “Forum on China-Africa Cooperation” mechanism，more and more Chinese enterprises are “going out” and their footprints are found around Africa. However，Chinese investors currently often neglect to include social responsibility risks in their investment decision making while paying more attention to the traditional risks of African countries，which leads to the lack of legitimacy as well as investment projects getting troubled. As an important way to obtain legitimacy，corporate social responsibility provides the possibility for enterprises to improve their international performance. This paper takes 108 Chinese manufacturing multinational companies that have investment projects in Africa as a sample，to explore the relationship between CSR engagement in Africa and its international performance，as well as examine the moderating effect of institutional distance on the above relationship. We find that the fulfillment of CSR in Africa by Chinese multinationals’ subsidiary has a significant and positive effect on the improvement of their international performance. Meanwhile，the greater the institutional distance between China and African countries，the stronger the positive effect of CSR on international performance. We also find that both the operation years in host countries and entry mode of joint venture play important roles in promoting international performance.