Next move

As chairman of China’s leading footwear manufacturer, Zhang has a bold ambition. He plans to make Ethiopia a global hub for the shoe industry within the next decade and be a key contributor to the country’s economy.

Likewise, the Ethiopian Government hopes to enlarge its production capacity cooperation with China by attracting more Chinese manufacturers, and help the country take off economically.

Mulugeta Tiruneh, head of the Ethiopian Investment Commission, said the country’s low labor cost and favorable environment for business offered attractive incentives to Chinese investors.

Huajian’s latest project, the Huajian International Light Industry City (Ethiopia), is a 126-hectare industrial park launched in the vicinity of Addis Ababa in April 2015, which cost 3.2 billion yuan ($480 million) to build. It is expected to generate annual revenues of about $2 billion and create about 50,000 local jobs by 2020.

“We should make full use of our own capacity advantages and advantages of production factors locally to achieve international capacity cooperation,” said Zhang. He believes this will not only improve the company’s global resources allocation, but also promote Ethiopia to keep mutually beneficial development going forward. Comments to yunan@chinafrica.cn