Professor Carlos Oya: How Can Chinese Companies Create More and Better Jobs for Africans?

University of London Professor Carlos Oya is among the world’s leading scholars on Chinese labor practices in Africa. Last July, he published a ground-breaking report that challenged widely-held perceptions about the quantity of Chinese imported labor in Ethiopia and Angola (90% of workers on Chinese construction projects in Ethiopia were locally hired and 74% in Angola).

Professor Oya’s Recommendations for African Governments on How to Generate More Labor Participation in Chinese Projects

  • IMPROVED GOVERNANCE: “Chinese companies do respond to the policy environment in which they operate. So African governments certainly have a key role to play in creating the conditions for and better jobs.”
  • SET EMPLOYMENT TARGETS: “In the infrastructure construction sector, one thing that can be done is to introduce employment-related targets into infrastructure contracts, while giving companies the time and space to be able to generate those jobs.”
  • LABOR LOCALIZATION RATES: “One policy tool that is used by some governments is restrictions on work permits for foreign workers so that tends to increase the proportion of local workers in the labor force.”

Watch the full segment on the DFID-ESRC Growth Research Programme YouTube channel.

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by Eric Olander

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