Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong
In the late 20th Century, there was a “tendency of [Anglosphere] media to focus almost exclusively on the negative side of the African experience,” with Africa “seen as the one part of the world for which the future was likely to be far worse than the past.”[1] A UK business journal famously labelled Africa “The Hopeless Continent.”[2]
A quarter century later Western media still frame Africa negatively.[3] Dominant depictions are built on a patronizing racism that has its roots in the colonial and neo-colonial relationship between the West and Africa. Chinese activities on the continent are similarly judged by Western entities to be uniquely negative,[4] influencing some African media to do the same.[5] The consistent Western deprecation of the Chinese presence in the continent reflects both Yellow Peril and Red Menace ideologies mobilized to confront what the US government regards as its “only peer competitor.”
Western media promote, for example, a “Chinese debt trap” claim; yet, studies have shown that China holds only an 18% share of Africa’s external debt[6] and that among 19 African countries in debt distress in 2017, the share of these countries’ external debt to China averaged just 15%.[7]
Moreover, after the G-20 created the Debt Service Standstill Initiative in 2020 to supposedly relieve heavily indebted states, China became the most significant debt relief country in this initiative. It suspended $5.7 billion in debt payments, contributing to more than half of the total global debt moratorium. Through this action, 45% of debts owed by the poorest countries to China was suspended. In contrast, the UK had no suspension of payments on its commercial loans and still recovered $3.2b in debt from countries that applied for the debt standstill initiative.[8]
China renegotiated or wrote off more than $78b in loans for foreign infrastructure projects between 2020 and early 2023.[9] After obtaining China’s debt relief in 2023, Ethiopia requested other G-20 countries to also suspend the country’s debt payments.[10]
Compared to Western media coverage, “Chinese reporting on the continent is more abundant, positive and diverse.”[11] Western media focus mainly on corruption and ineffectiveness of African leaders, civil wars and terrorism. Chinese media report on a wide range of socio-economic topics and are positive about Africa’s development potential and its wider global and regional connections beyond the West.
Chinese officials and scholars affirm that “China needs Africa as much as Africa needs China”[12] or even that “China needs Africa more than Africa needs China.’”[13] China calls Africa “a continent of opportunities and a promising land for investors.”[14] China and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) benefit from solid African diplomatic support, but China also reciprocates; thus, in 2022 it launched an “Initiative for Peaceful Development in the Horn of Africa” and in 2023 upgraded its relationship with Ethiopia from a “strategic partnership” to the rare level of “all-weather development cooperation.”[15]
No Chinese leader has pronounced, as did French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Senegal in 2007, that Africans have “not entered history” and are not oriented toward the future or progress.[16] Even as Trump in 2018 termed African states “shithole countries,”[17] Xi Jinping framed African states and peoples as equals, distinct from the hegemonic dehumanization in western media.”[18]
From 2014-2020, he made ten trips to Africa, while in 2017-2022, there was only a single, brief stopover in Africa by a US president, in Egypt.[19] Although one can find examples of internalization of western stereotyping, in large part Chinese merchants who live on the African continent are equally positive in their perceptions of African development and potentials for economic partnership. Chinese who work closely with Africans[20] and Chinese managers at industrial enterprises in Ethiopia we interviewed, regard local workers as reliable, adaptable, quick-learners.[21]
Ethiopia as a BRI Model: Industrialization through infrastructure building
Among Africa’s 54 states, 52 are part of the BRI, but there is no African country that Chinese officials have been more positive about than Ethiopia; they regard it, as an idiom puts it, “the only one and no number two” (独一无二). Ethiopia is Africa’s second most populous country. It has a Japan-level population, but is growing at 2.5% per annum and with an average age of 18.8, while Japan’s population is shrinking at -0.5% per year and has an average age of 49.[22] Despite an ongoing civil war in 2022, Ethiopia’s GDP grew by 5.3%, versus 3.6% for all of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).[23]
Though GDP growth does not capture the entirety of human development and wellbeing, at the junction of world and especially developing country economic stagnation, this level of GDP growth is welcomed. Addis Ababa is the “capital of Africa,” hosting the African Union, UN Economic Commission on Africa, and African Center for Disease Control, plus Africa offices of many international organizations, such as the United Nation Development Program.
Ethiopia is however seen as the BRI model country in Africa for reasons more directly related to key aspects of the Initiative – infrastructure building and industrializing investment. As a Kenyan analyst has put it, “China is the only major country that has proven quite interested in going into fragile situations to do some infrastructure projects in Africa,”[24] while Western states have scaled back such activities.[25] By 2017, Chinese firms had 50% of Africa’s internationally-contracted construction market.[26] China also provides financial wherewithal for infrastructure-building, with more than one-fifth the value of external loans to sub-Saharan Africa coming from Beijing.[27] In 2006-2018, China lent Ethiopia US$14.83 billion, 82.2% of it for 70 mega-projects (22 in transport and communications, 35 in power, 13 for sugar factories and urban water supply).[28]
An Ethiopian business journal stated in 2020 that “Ethiopia is the leading country in sub-Saharan Africa with the highest number of Chinese contracted projects.” It averred that “Almost all big buildings, roads and dam projects throughout the country are being handled by Chinese contractors.” Local firms are not thought to be equipped to complete mega-projects, but Ethiopians do participate.
[…]
In fact, contrary to Western media portrayals, not many Chinese work at projects in Ethiopia. There were fewer than 6,000 in 2021, among the 15,000 Chinese then-reported as living in a country of 127 million people.[30]
Ethiopia as a BRI Model: Industrialization through manufacturing
China is important to Africa’s trade pattern. Using the problematic category of “Sub-Saharan Africa” (SSA), one-fifth of its total goods exports go to China, with metals, minerals, and fuel some three-fifths of that, although Ethiopia exports none of these. China is also the largest source of imports in Africa, mainly manufactures and machinery.[31] Many imports are used in Chinese infrastructure and industrial projects, especially in Ethiopia.
China’s proportion of the stock of SSA’s FDI is still small, at 4.4%. [32] Its share however is growing, while the UK and US shares have diminished: they had 17% and 15% of FDI stock in Africa in 2004–08, but only 6% percent each in 2014–18. From 2016 to 2020, China also contributed 20% of the value of greenfield (entirely new) FDI in Africa, more than three and four times the US and UK shares.[33] Moreover, little of the US’s aid to Africa promotes industrialization.[34]
Despite scholars contending that “Several features of Ethiopia make it a ‘perfect storm’ for Chinese investment,”[35] the country has been central to China’s industrializing investment in Africa. African leaders emphasized at the 2022 AU meeting that industrialization is key to mitigating poverty and must be sped up.[36] When the BRICS countries met in 2023, Ethiopia was asked to join and Xi Jinping said China would “support Africa in growing its manufacturing sector and realizing industrialization and economic diversification.”[37]
Already by 2017, China was said to be involved in 12% of Africa’s industrial production.[38] Some 13.4% of its stock of investment in Africa in 2021 was in manufacturing – with 37% in construction and 10% in mining[39]-but manufacturing’s importance is increasing, especially in Ethiopia. In 18 key African states in 2000-2010 and 2010-2018, manufacturing’s average annual value-added growth was 5% and 4.3%; while in Ethiopia it was 7.8% and 16.8%. Average annual growth in manufacturing jobs in the 18 states was 4.8% and 4.9%; in Ethiopia it was 11.2% and 6.9%.[40]
Some 3,000 Chinese firms operate in Africa; 70% of them private.[41] The proportion is similar in Ethiopia[42]. While state-owned enterprises (SOEs) dominate in construction, Chinese firms in manufacturing are mainly private. SOEs are large and experienced, but private firms vary in size, background and focus: many are small-to-medium and family-owned and thus more vulnerable to such destabilizing factors as epidemics, civil wars, and sanctions.[43]
Ethiopia is Africa’s second largest FDI recipient and China plays a key role in its industrialization.[44] As of late 2023, China’s 1,844 investment projects in Ethiopia were 4-5 times the number of US and Indian projects.[45] Its stock of investment in 2023, at $4.8b, was one-tenth the stock of all Chinese FDI in Africa and one-sixth the stock of all FDI in Ethiopia. It is said to have created 560,000 Ethiopian “job opportunities,” mainly in clothing and textiles, building materials, plastics and metals, and engineering. In 2021, Chinese firms accounted for 60% of Ethiopia’s approved new FDFI projects, almost all in manufacturing and services.[46]
Ethiopia’s manufactured exports in 2023 were a fifth of all its exports. Chinese manufacturing exporters are based in Ethiopia’s 13 public and 5 private industrial parks (IPs), eleven of them Chinese-built and mostly housing Chinese firms. IPs have attracted FDI of US$740m since 2013 and IP occupancy rates have been as high as 80%. They have created 150,000 jobs, almost all for locals and mainly for women. The oldest IP, the Chinese-managed Eastern Industrial Park near Addis, had 26,000 workers in 2023, 5% of them Chinese and 70-80% women.[47] Hawassa IP, 275 km south of Addis was even larger and 97% of its 35,000 workers in 2021 were locals.[48] Ethiopia plans to transform all IPs into special economic zones. The first will be the Chinese-built Dire Dawa IP being completed in late 2023, 450 km from the capital, along with the Chinese-built railway from Addis to the port at Djibouti that handles Ethiopia’s external trade.[49]
Ethiopia as a BRI Model: non-economic aspects
The Ethiopia/China BRI relationship is not wholly economic; for example, educational ties are well-developed. In 2018, China had recruited 81,500 African university students and offered more scholarships to its African students than all the leading Western governments combined.[50] Already by 2017, when China had 74,011 African students, 4,883 were Ethiopians, up from 844 in 2011 and more than twice the number of Ethiopians studying in the US.[51] In 2023, Ethiopians were said to “account for the largest Chinese scholarship recipients.”[52] China was also supporting 117 Ethiopians studying at Addis Ababa University.[53]
The Luban Workshop, a vocational training program China developed as part of the BRI, is worth noting as well. It has operated since 2016 in 25 developing countries, including Ethiopia. Workshops are partly tailored to graduates getting jobs in local Chinese firms and one at Ethiopian Technical University since 2021 is paired with China’s Tianjin University of Technology. Many of its instructors are Ethiopians who studied in China. The curriculum centers on robotics and AI-using manufacturing, as well as including learning specific to IT giant Huawei’s technology. This is perhaps one reason why an Ethiopian team finished 3rd among 146 teams from 36 countries in Huawei’s 2023 ICT competition.[54]
[…]
Ethiopia as a BRI Model, But Not a Model for Transformation
Although Ethiopia is a model BRI country in Africa, the relationship is not unproblematic. On the Chinese side, in mid-2023, infrastructure-builders faced severe problems from the Ethiopian government’s shortage of foreign exchange and from increasing materials costs.[56] The situation for IPs since early 2022 has also been precarious, due to US sanctions imposed during the civil war with Tigrayan rebels.[57] Ethiopia’s eligibility for duty-free entry of its goods into the US under the politically-conditioned African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) was suspended which, the Ethiopian government said, resulted in “millions” of workers being laid off.[58] The US move caused Ethiopia to further strengthen its ties with China and though the war ended in November 2022, the US renewed its sanctions against Ethiopian officials in fall 2023. Ethiopia remains outside AGOA, which itself may expire for all of Africa in 2025.[59] China, in contrast, now grants zero tariff treatment to 98% of products from Ethiopia.[60]
On the Ethiopian side, Chinese and other foreign-invested firms continue to pay IP workers very low wages, averaging with benefits only about US$100 a month. That is less pay than for comparable work in Bangladesh, albeit slightly higher than what workers earn at surrounding Ethiopian-owned firms. Wages of the few Chinese IP employees, mainly managers, supervisors, and trainers, are much higher, up to 20 times the local wage.[61] Unsurprisingly then, there have been strikes, such as one at the Hawassa IP in 2019.[62] These actions had achieved some positive outcomes, such as higher wages and recognition of unions – until many thousands of workers at Hawassa and other IPs were laid off in 2022 due to sanctions.l violence.[63]
[…]
Via https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/07/24/ethiopia-as-a-belt-and-road-initiative-model/
