Facingfacts

Latest figures show that more than 3,000 Chinese enterprises currently are operating in Africa, covering almost all African countries and regions. According to a research fellow of the Institute of West-asian and African Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Western media continue to report negatively on this growing investment, saying that many of these enterprises “damaged the local environment” and “did not fulfill their corporate social responsibility (CSR).” Zhu has visited many Chinese projects and enterprises during several research trips to Africa, collecting a large amount of data on their operations. Recently, he spoke to reporter about his findings, which presents a very different picture to that of many Western media reports.

Chinafrica: Do you think Chinese enterprises are “giving fish” or “teaching how to fish”? Zhu Weidong: Most of the Chinese enterprises in Africa I visited have developed training programs for local people. This has boosted the transfer of skills to local technicians and increased their job opportunities. For example, during the construction of the Mombasanairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) in Kenya, China Road and Bridge Corp. (CRBC) trained more than 18,000 Kenyan workers. In addition, it has also teamed up with the local railway authority, a local training school and China’s Southwest Jiaotong University, and trained 10 Kenyan teachers and 100 students on railway operations in the first term. A China-kenya railway training institute will be built to provide training for around 3,000 Kenyan railway technicians.

To address the problem of the lack of technicians in the Addis Ababa-djibouti Railway project, more than 36,000 local workers have been trained by Chinese enterprises. The training has not only addressed the needs of human resource during railway construction, but also cultivated technicians for railway maintenance and operation in the future.

Huajian International Shoe City (Ethiopia) Plc., a private Chinese shoe-manufacturing company in Ethiopia, has also paid attention to training local people. The company set up a special class for new staff, with experienced teachers providing training and guidance. It also provides excellent local workers with training opportunities in China. A group of local staff members have been promoted to senior positions after they received training in China.

How about local people’s employment? Can Chinese enterprises help in this regard? It is reported in some Western media that Chinese enterprises have brought their own workers to Africa and did not hire Africans, which took away local job opportunities. This argument is groundless. In fact, many Chinese enterprises attach great importance to the localization of their businesses. They have recruited a large number of local people, and some local employees have been promoted to supervisors and managers after being trained.

Dr. Deborah Brautigam, Director of the China-africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, said this kind of claim was “rumor,” and she noted that the majority of the staff workers recruited in Chinese enterprises are locals. She expressed this view in her article titled Five Myths about Chinese Investment in Africa published in Foreign Policy in December 2015.

During my visit to the Mombasa-nairobi SGR project, I found that this project had created a total of