Category: Manufacturing
There’s Growing Excitement That a New Ugandan-Chinese Smartphone Will Help to Stop the Spread of COVID-19
Bloomberg's Quick Take team showcased the new G507 smartphone made by the Chinese company SIMI and manufactured locally in Uganda. The phone comes equipped with a body temperature scanner that the company claims is similar to those temperature guns that have become a widespread tool to detect ...
Morocco, Tunisia Vie to Become the “New China in Africa”
For years, European companies, like others, have been steadily moving their production from China to lower-cost, less complicated manufacturing hubs in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world. The massive disruption to global supply chains brought about due to the COVID-19 outbreak has only accelerated that ...
COVID-19 Crisis Sparks New Drive in Africa to Reduce Dependency on Chinese Imports and Boost Local Manufacturing
The disruption to global trade due to the COVID-19 outbreak and high levels of dependency on imported Chinese goods are prompting policymakers in a growing number of African countries to develop new initiatives that aim to boost local manufacturing. Uganda Wants ...
African Calls to Onshore Manufacturing From China Grow Louder but Investors Urge Caution
During a recent speech where he unveiled an R800 billion rescue package to combat the effects of the COVID-19 crisis, South African Finance Minister Tito Mboweni also laid out an ambitious vision for what he would like to see once the current crisis ...
Rebound in Chinese Manufacturing Provides a Small, Badly Needed Boost to African Oil Prices
New data confirming that China's manufacturing sector is slowly coming back to life helped to give a badly needed boost to African commodity and currency prices on Tuesday. China's Purchasing Managers Index, a key metric that measures factory activity, jumped to ...
Ethiopia’s China-Inspired Agro-Processing Strategy
In August 2019 Melange Coffee Roasters, a family-owned Ethiopian coffee processing company inaugurated a new plant in Addis Ababa. With an investment of 1.37 million USD, the plant immediately began exporting processed, powdered packages of Ethiopia’s world-renowned coffee to China and South Africa. ...
Africans May Dislike Their Dependence on Imported Chinese Goods, But There Isn’t Much They Can Do About It
With a majority of China's ports and factories still offline due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, African businesses are starting to run very low on supplies of products sourced in China, prompting discussions about where they will be able to find new, reliable yet equally affordable suppliers. ...
Without South African Chrome, There Can Be No Chinese Stainless Steel
Coming off the N4 motorway near the small town of Marikana in South Africa’s platinum landscape, one almost immediately encounters the huge Tharisa Minerals mining operation. This gigantic open cast mine was started in 2009 for the production of chromium concentrate and platinum group metals (PGM) and ...
China is Financing an Electric Power Building Boom in Africa
African policymakers up and down the continent will all tell you that one issue, more than any other, stands apart as the key priority in 2020: electricity. Without additional electric power capacity, both generation and distribution, none of their ambitious industrialization plans will be possible. Industries need ...
Chinese Investment and Labor Practices in Ethiopia
Ethiopia stands out from other African countries for its ability to attract Chinese companies to open factories there. Through a combination of tax incentives, industrial parks, and its strategic location, Ethiopia is outpacing pretty much every other African country in luring ...
Acclaimed Author/Journalist Howard W. French: China Industrializing Africa is “Largely a Fantasy”
In his regular column in World Politics Review, the always-interesting author/journalist Howard W. French wrote today about Africa and its booming population will become a transformative power in the future. But contrary to growing enthusiasm among many observers that African countries will be able to industrialize in ...
A Cautionary Lesson About Chinese Manufacturing in Africa
The pace of Chinese manufacturing going offshore has picked up significantly in the past year, spurred on by U.S. sanctions and the worsening U.S.-China trade conflict. Regardless of what's going on with the U.S., manufacturers were already motivated by China's rising ...