Urban infrastructure required for China’s tannery investments in Africa to work
18/12/2013
Two Connecticut-based academics, Xiangming Chen and Garth Myers, contributed an article to the Eurasia Review journal in December on the subject of China’s influence on the development of urban infrastructure in Africa. They said China’s cumulative investment in Africa reached $21 billion in 2012, and that more than 2,000 Chinese companies are now operating across the continent in all sectors.
As a result, the authors continued, trade across all sectors between China and Africa as a whole reached a record $200 billion in 2012, and they said this makes China Africa’s biggest trading partner now.
Chinese investment in the economic development of African countries is clearly of great importance, but Xiangming Chen and Garth Myers also highlight criticisms of some aspects of China’s approach, for example in the way some Chinese employers treat their African workers.
Another criticism is that Chinese investors have “failed to build backward and forward linkages” to help their industrial projects work smoothly. One of the examples the authors offer is the China-Africa Overseas Leather Products tannery, located just outside Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. According to the Eurasia Review article, the tannery, which is Chinese-owned and -run, has hired 450 workers at $37-$53 a month, meaning labour costs are “much lower rates than in China and most other parts of Asia”. However, it is taking more than 40 days to bring chemicals from China to the tannery owing to “poor and highly inefficient transport infrastructure”.
The article concludes: “It circles back to China’s heavy investment in urban infrastructure in Africa as a necessary condition for supporting labour-intensive manufacturing that can sustain economic growth in the long run.”
Share this story:
