 Good evening, everyone and welcome to this evening's event. A very warm welcome to you. This is your first visit to SOWAS I am Carol Tan professor of law and head of the school of law. I Am by virtue of my own research interests a member of the SOWAS China Institute One of the hosts of tonight's event The other host being the SOWAS Center of African Studies Center for African Studies This kind of collaboration between two research centers and the staff obviously between of the two centers Is quite typical of the cross disciplinary and cross regional study of the world that goes on at SOWAS As many of you who are students here already know This evening's event is a book discussion of a recently published collection of essays addressing a topic of China Africa and Economic transformation as you can see on the screen Copies are available. I can say this without embarrassment because I didn't write the book Copies of the book are available at a discounted price. I believe outside The editors of the volume are dr. Akabai Akaba ok by and professor Justin Lynn now dr. Akabai is our key speaker tonight and He and the rest of the panel of distinguished speakers will be introduced by my colleague professor Stephen Chan Stephen is professor of world politics at SOWAS and his long list of publications Comprised works Mainly focusing on the continent of Africa with a special interest on southern Africa He has written about diplomacy foreign policy electoral systems elections internationalization Etc. So he is A most suitable person I should say to chair the rest of this evening and I shall indeed Hand over the microphone to him Well, excellencies your distinguished guests and Good colleagues and friends You're very very welcome We're going to begin a fool and I hope very interesting program for you this evening by asking the publisher of tonight's book and Mr. Adams what I just say a few words about What it's like to publish a book as deeply complex and as interesting and as important as Tonight's future book so Adam It's not about me So I'll sit here quietly in the corner like a good book publisher and see what everyone else what ideas they have to come up with Because a book launch a book event Everyone seems to focus on the book the artifact the thing in front of you and That's really the icing on the cake. That's really a transitory stage in the life of this as a project This is a project with a two-year 18 month history culminating in printed Printed words on a page and on screen and online and available on an e-book reader from your favorite distributor And it's that process that I'd just like to take a moment to reflect on from a research perspective and a publishing perspective I Could be is is not a stranger to me. He published a rather famous little book called Made in Africa industrial policy in Ethiopia which I believe has some sort of resonance with this Institution here with so as so coming home It was a pleasure to publish that book, but it was also an eye-opener to working with someone in public life with an academic interest and zeal To be able to combine these and part of this combination is the the process of networking and teams and what we bring and so an edited volume which Some of you may know is not to be undertaken likely Is is quite a commitment. It's the oversight. It's the combination and I'll admit this isn't the only book that our could be has edited Which has been published with OUP in the last couple of years as well Because the idea of building a network and building a team of researchers bringing them together Discussing and sharing ideas at draft stage Going away with quite strict deadlines. I love people who deliver on time With quite strict deadlines and then to be able to not only present it in a way Which shows the thought and the work that goes into it but to add an introduction to it that attempts to sum up what the original plan was and How everyone delivered and where the gaps are and where the future research ought to go from Being part of that process and being part of some of those conversations listening in quietly at the side Chipping in where appropriate about what the readers might take away from this There's been an absolute delight So I'm not going to steal any thunder as towards the content because I'm merely a warmer backed But it's not just about the book. It's about the research that went into it It's about an event like this where you get to hear the ideas Read some of the content in whichever medium or platforms most comfortable for you and then to take from it and To continue that work and collaboration going forward. That's the nature of the research and I'd hope In due course I get the opportunity to publish some more from people in this room. Thank you very much indeed It's not often ladies and gentlemen that you get Publishers endorsement of that sort especially from Oxford University Press So I thank Adam very much for that Ladies and gentlemen, I myself have been working on China and Africa relations for most of the 2000s and I know that's one of our guests like Professor Fartu cheru has also been involved in the same research in the same publication On a topic which is very easily Sensationalized and particularly in the United States. It is sensationalized and so the need for sober reflective expert Opinion knowledge and judgment on this issue is absolutely essential for the future development of two continents Tonight's book is an extremely distinguished contribution to the debate on China and Africa One of the two co-editors dr. Justin knew I had the pleasure of debating him at the University of London Sweden and it became very very clear to me that I'd better raise my game because Justin spoke first and It was absolutely crystal clear within the first 90 seconds that he was a technocratic thinker of the very first Order formerly chief economist at the World Bank now a very very distinguished academic figure in China itself Combining the highest levels of practitioner knowledge at school with the highest level of academic research and Contemplation now ladies and gentlemen that combination is very very rare, but it's epitomized tonight personified in fact by the second editor of tonight's book About China Africa Economic Transformation and that's dr. Akebi Okube He has a special relationship with so as that continues his wife is here Akebi himself took his PhD here at this institution, so we regard him as one of our own He is a senior minister and special advisor in the office of the prime minister of Ethiopia a Reforming prime minister who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize So he epitomizes a new generation in Ethiopia and in Africa that is Technocratic progressive and wants to go ahead on a planned but still very very bold basis Akebi epitomized his boldness and his managerial skills when he was mayor of Addis Ababa a city that's grown phenomenally Underneath his marotille it grew in an organized and Absolutely planned way it might seem like a chaotic expansion the thought that went into making that manageable I was a very great deal to the night's speaker, and he was voted best African mayor in 2006 I was on the short list of the best mayor in the world in the same era He has been given a very great deal of recognition in Japan Where he has been awarded the Order of the Rising Sun gold and silver star and Associated with the United Nations wider Institute and with various research institutes around the world I caught seven books that he's published with Oxford University Press Maybe I'm missing one or two, but actually I don't know any academic here at Oxford He's published that many books with Oxford University Press So perhaps we could persuade him to perhaps put his name forward to be the new director Of so as and he could come here and set up shop on a permanent basis I know he has many friends here who would welcome somebody with his very very wide spectrum of planning skills to try to run This institution He was very much recognized by a new African magazine as one of the 100 most influential Africans of 2016 calling him a leading figure on Africa's strategic development So it's very rare. We have someone as I said who combines the very very best of both practitioner and Academic skills to address us tonight, particularly on such a contentious topic he comes to speak to us from the hot seat because of course Ethiopia and Asap about our key sites of Chinese interest and Chinese investment How did he handle them? What does he think about all of this? Is there a very very positive way of viewing all of these things? How can the Africans face the Chinese on equal terms? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you tonight speaker dr. Ikebi Okube. Good evening everyone as this is This hall is for me very familiar and Because of course PD was given here and Here there are many friends Who have made my life as well as quite enjoyable I have his Chris my supervisor and also Carlos who was a member of research committee and Many more and here also we have friends like fun to Cheryl Who has also contributed a lot to on China Africa studies and has been an important Advisor to this volume I would like to thank professor Stephen because he was one of the scholars who reviewed the book and wrote endorsements on the book and Many thanks for the opening remark Carol So as is a nice place to stay and it's like a family. I should also thank Angelica who is hiding here I'm saying the this event and She was able to Bring both institutes to organize this this event And it's not only me that had studied that saw us My wife studied her master's course here at saw us and she's a PhD candidate Negusty is here. So it's so as for us is like a family. So Good evening today. I'll be talking on China Africa and an economic transformation We are discussing about China Africa, but the central Concept is the link with with the economic transformation of Africa in 1971 maodilung said our African brothers brought us to the United Nations and This was for the reason that among the 76 countries that supported China to be a member of the United Nations 35 countries that form Africa this is 50 years back and China Africa has now emerged as the largest South South Cooperation Fokker Which is considered as a platform between China and Africa is now a key dominant partnership Platform so the first point that we need to explore is next slide is China new to Africa as I refer to 1971 maodilung Caught it shows that it's not a new phenomena. It's not about post 2000 and history goes back and the first Such initiative where China and African countries came together was a bandung conference in 1955 and 20 countries from Asia and Africa were present during this conference. They were discussing how to improve the roll of Asia and Africa during the Cold War how Economic development could be promoted and Also, how colonialism could end in Africa and Asia So it has a long history in 1960s the first financial assistance or loan was given to an African country, Guinea $25 million was given for a tea plantation and tobacco and cigarette factory and the Guineans used it effectively 1964 the first textile factory was financed from China and 1970s early Tazara 2000 Clements of Railway was built with Finance from from China so long history and it shows that the China Africa Narrative is not a new Issue a new geopolitical agenda There are two narratives related with the China Africa ties and the two narratives could be differentiated Based on to the extent they rely on the evidence as well as whether they put african interests at the core And also the optimism reflected within these narratives One narrative is a Eurocentric narrative which tries to portray the China Africa Relationship as a new way of colonialism This is quite dominant in the mainstream Media and also some scholars our alternative view which is reflected in this volume is a positive reveal that shows that collaboration between China and Africa doesn't mean and Does not have negative implication and can play a positive role in the progress of this Continent and it tries to see with the lens based on critical evidence One of the scholars that have been Doing studies Based on evidence is professor Deborah Brotigan at the Hopkins University Actual as this volume has been dedicated to her because for more than 30 years Deborah has been studying China Africa one specific example is the land grab Some seven eight years back land grab was a very popular issue and The land grab everyone was consultants researchers were saying There is a big wave of land grab in Africa and it was linked with with Chinese and it a P. I was an example and an interesting thing is that in each API there was no such an issue of land grab and The Chinese were not even in agriculture sector completely So factors gradually showed that the land grab was Simply a question At least that does not apply to to it appears context So there are two narratives and the narrative we want share is how to link the China Africa ties with the Africa's economic development So China is now amongst the four largest investors in the continent Together with France UK United States But it's also the largest trading partner in your 20 in year 2000 The trade volume was 10 billion In 2014 the peak of the trade volume is 3 220 billion which is 21 times of the trade volume in 14 years back in year 2000 in terms of finance about 130 billion US dollars has been accessed by African countries and about 50% is in energy and connectivity In terms of human capital there is no compiled data, but many Africans are studying in China Through scholarships actually the new trend is now many Africans are going to China Paying their own fee their own tuition fee to study in China. Actually, it's not a trend specific to Africa a day before two days back I was at LSE workshop and One of studies presented shows that One of the largest wave of scholarships from India is in China Many Indian students are studying in in China So in terms of human capital we see some Dynamics as well But in totality despite this progress we see unevenness in this Economic ties when we say unevenness it means that it's mainly few countries who are benefiting from this Cooperation maybe a dozen countries and these countries who are benefiting are trying to maximize the benefits because they have strategic approach to the China Africa ties But there are also again imbalances in this economic time. If you look at trade the import from China is bigger And the growth rate is quite faster than the export from Africa to China It's mainly machineries value-added products coming from China, but from Africa. It's mainly primary commodities So this will is going to restrict the trade volume the composition of trade in the long term. This trade is not going to be sustainable if we refer to financing and debt Since African countries are not generating sufficient exports It's becoming difficult to repay on time and the size of Financing is also being constrained These are imbalances and unevenness that we need to see and find Options on how this risk constraints could be improved next slide Yeah, these are some historical evidence Nierere and Mao Zedong. This is 1965 Emperor Heisei 1971 this is a funny Friendship our emperor was absolute monarch and Mao Zedong was a communist and a very tall emperor and a very I mean a very short Emperor and then you could see Mao Zedong taller maybe this photograph might have been adjusted because Mao Zedong is quite tall and Chuanglai visited 10 African countries in 1964 OEU or Organization for Africa unity was established in 1963 and 1964 January Chuanglai visited 10 countries including Ethiopia This is a band and conference next Yeah, so I highlighted the China Africa the broader picture But we have to dive in to see some specific examples and it a pair present us as a good example and the reason is it's a typical sub-Saharan low-income country and each API is in a way Also portrays the inspiration of African countries the economy has been growing Double digit 10.5 percent for 15 years and before that 5.5 percent for about 10 years So it's the fastest growing economy, but this is a very poor low-income country and it's a country experimenting with new ideas in industrialization and It has not been considered as a very good student of Washington consensus. It has been following homegrown policies for the last two three decades So this could help us to understand the China Africa ties because Ethiopia does not have cobalt copper or petroleum or resources that Chinese are charged that they are coming to Africa to to take resources so the Ethiopia's strategic collaboration with China has fit in with Ethiopia's Rapid economy grows and initiatives related with industrialization FDI grows has been quite fast since year 2011 and between 2012 and 2017 FDI inflow increased by four-fold primarily in manufacturing. We could see the next slide Yeah, the rapid economy grows could be observed from here. This is not data of the Ethiopian government. This is data from the World Bank. So the red line is the Ethiopia's economy grows and then we see Nigeria Nigeria is important because it's the largest economy in Africa and then we see sub-Saharan Africa average and then the yellow one our world average grows. If we see the next chart We could see how FDI has been growing quite fast. We are raising FDI because it's primarily productive investment and the blue line is the most interesting thing between 2012 and 2017 there has been a four-fold growth and the blue one is manufacturing FDI and 2017 manufacturing FDI reached 89 percent So China has been an important player in this process. For instance in terms of investment from the total 5400 FDI registered investment certificates 1350 or close 20 percent is from China and this is mainly in manufacturing The Mackenzie study conducted in 2017 shows that there were about 10,000 firms in Africa from China and on average only 30 percent were in manufacturing while in Ethiopia's case according to Mackenzie study 67% of Chinese companies in Ethiopia were in manufacturing. This was an outcome linked with the government's policy to aim and target China as a source of manufacturing investment. Why? China is a manufacturing powerhouse 27% of global manufacturing is based in in China So it has been feeding the FDI sources. In terms of financing, Ethiopia has received about 12 billion US dollars loans, commercial and constitutional loans for infrastructure and the infrastructure investment has three characteristics. It's linked with industrialization. It's linked with export, developing export corridor and almost all the such investments are mainly sustainable or green energy sources for instance. Human capital has been part of this process, but the data is not compiled to show the trend. Trade, China is the largest trading partner like the continent. So if we look to the next pictures This is the Adisaba Djibouti railway line. This is a new railway line that has speed of 120 kilometers. It used to take three days. Now it takes nine to ten hours through this new transportation system. What makes this different is it's not diesel run or thermal power run. It's an electric power used by the renewable energy Ethiopia primarily realized 98% of Ethiopia's energy is in solar, wind and hydropower or in brief renewable energy. Let's go to the next photo. Yeah, this is Adama Windfall and there has been two projects implemented in Adama. Next. Yeah, this is among the factories that has been invested and manufacturing has been core central in Ethiopia's initiative, especially targeted to China. The investment targeting is not just focusing on China, by the way. It differs sector by sector. If it's Floriculture, the main targeted origin of FDI is especially Netherlands or Holland. If it's April in textile, it includes India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Hong Kong. And within China, the targeting goes even at province level. China has 34 provinces. If it's April in textile, it mainly focuses on four or five provinces where upper sector is quite has significance presence. Next. This is one of the industrial parks. Ethiopia has been building a new generation of industrial parks. The parks are not funded or financed by Chinese government. They are entirely financed by Ethiopian government, but Chinese consultants and contractors have been involved. But the study on industrial hubs and special economic zones has also significantly benefited from learning from China. Next. This is a very interesting thing. Ethiopian Airlines is first flight to China was 1973. After the visit of Emperor in 1971, and it hasn't stopped and flights started before seven or eight years. And during the first year about 50,000 travelers were using Ethiopian Airlines. In 2018, it has exceeded one million travelers. And Ethiopian Airlines flies 250 flights per month. It flies to Beijing, Shanghai, Guanzhou, Hong Kong, Chengdu, Chongqing, and also Shenzhen coming. This really shows an important aspect. This is a service export. And Ethiopian Airlines has been able to tap this opportunity. China can be partly a market. And this is one one typical example of the strategic approach in relation to the relationship with China. Next. Yeah. So the first point I was trying to highlight was the China Africa ties has played an important role, has been a catalyst in Africa's economic transformation. However, there is unevenness and imbalance. And Ethiopia presents a strategic approach in the China Africa ties. The second thing I would like to highlight is if Africa has to partner with China or to develop ties and corporations, it's important to see the role of China in this global economy. And China is an extending economic power. And here we have to be sober. The trade war is not our agenda. It could be about the first and second biggest economies. But we primarily see from the lens of Africa how we benefit from this dynamics. So the rising economic power is by itself a challenge. But it also offers opportunity for this continent. But the first thing we need to see is this is a rare economic miracle. We are using miracle as a term to show that the phenomena has been quite extraordinary. So within 40 years, China's economic growth has been on average annually 9.5 percent. And GDP per capita increased from $156 to $10,000 in year 2019. And this is quite amazing progress. And export has been growing at a rate close to 15 percent for the last 40 years. China has pursued export-led industrialization and have been able to insert into the global value chain and to attract FDI in a way that it promotes its manufacturing capability and as well as its export capacity. So this is a very interesting element where Africa could learn as a source of inspiration. 70 percent of the global poverty was elevated because of China. China elevated 700 million people living on the poverty line and which accounts 70 percent of the global poverty range. Second element is the rising global economic power. 30 percent of the growth dynamics is being generated by China currently. 30 percent. And 16 percent of global GDP is accounted by China. And in terms of the trend according to World Bank, I made in all other OECD forecasts by 2030 China will have the largest economy and China will also be a high-income economy. Innovation is a major challenge for China. It's rebalancing its economy. But the investment in research and development is growing quite fast. In 2019 China spent 450 billion US dollars on R&D. America's investment or resource that was channeled to R&D was in total 480 billion. So 85 percent has been because the resource allocated to innovation is increasing. And currently it's a level of investment in R&D's equivalent to OECD countries. However, it's not to say that China's economy is on par with the US. In terms of GDP per capita, China has a long way to go because when we look at the per capita GDP, the difference gap is quite significant. But its global presence because of the scale it has gives China a significant advantage. The central issue, China has been able to write its own script. It has been able to design its own development strategy to experiment and to charge its own path of development. And it is an important lesson for our continent. China effect and Chinese resources and China in general as a global public good could be observed in many aspects, road and belt initiative at the market opportunity. And one issue coming back to the tourism is important to mention here. Chinese international tourists in year 2017-19 reached 150 million and they spent 300 billion globally. Africa currently is only tapping 1 percent. But this shows us as China becomes more the income level increases, it also creates an opportunity for market. The next slide. Yeah, so catalyzing the China Africa ties for Africa's economic development is the central issue. Structural transformation is an agenda in many African countries. And after the end of resource boom in 2014, many African countries are considering that sustaining rapid economy growth without structural transformation is almost impossible or difficult and they need to diversify their economy. The other element we need to consider is it's not only China that needs Africa. It's absolutely important African countries recognize that we need China quite equally like the Chinese need Africa. This is important because if African governments consider that Africa will need China, they will design strategy. They will show bigger commitment to ensure that we attract more investment from China. We use China as a targeted market and also we can tap resources from from China. So in brief, Africa needs China. Africa also needs the East at the West. Africa needs the South at the North and it also needs new partners equally as traditional partners like Europe. As a central issue, whether China's ties serves as a catalyst will greatly depend on the African agency, whether African countries will have a strategic approach, whether they will be applying a proactive approach. Currently, that's not what we observe. Africa Union is not taking, spearheading these ties at regional blocks level or at national level. African countries need to, they have a lot of homework to ensure this ties is beneficial to this continent. One additional element we need to highlight is China as a source of learning. China can be a source of learning especially in industrialization but also in terms of policy making. One of the positive experiences in China is the pragmatic approach to policy making. Not ideological, what works is an important policy that's pursued and the Chinese use experiment and piloting and this could be an important approach that Africans can learn from this process. Next. Yeah, so the critical issue here is China Africa ties is important for this continent and African countries need to have a proactive and strategic approach and learning also will be critical as significant as resources or investment. Next. Yeah, the last slide is mainly shows books that has been published. The central issue here is Africa's economic transformation. Made in Africa is essentially about industrial policy and economic transformation in this continent. The Oxford handbook of the Ethiopian economy which was co-edited with Chris and Fanto, the central concept is economic transformation of Ethiopian economy but it also tries to link with this continent. The China Africa volume essentially focuses on economic transformation. This is one of the handbooks which will be released after a few months and it focuses on global research on industrial hubs on special economic zones and Chinese experience also is included here about 10 chapters about five chapters are on China. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much for that very, very interesting and I think challenging presentation putting a very, very positive view on how African countries can develop their relationships with China very much contrary to the received Western version of the African countries merely as victims. So with that important corrective in mind, I'm going to introduce this evening's second speaker, my marvelous colleague here at SOAS, Professor Carlos Oya. Carlos has been, let's say, a very, very welcome fixture here at SOAS for quite some time. When I was the dean here, he made my life quite bearable on certain days and totally unbearable on other days but someone who was always a stimulus in the corridors and his own recent work on China in Africa has been absolutely a revelation to me, deeply detailed, deeply researched, saying things that are possible only by virtue of this very, very deep research and so some words please from Professor Carlos Oya. Thank you. Okay, I have a number of remarks on the process of the book and also on the topic in general but I think this is a special occasion for me as well because Archbishop is here and it's a special book but also, I mean, I've been in these corridors for 25 years. I was a student here as well so yeah, I'm definitely a kind of almost permanent fixture of this place and just before I say a few things about the actual substance of my own contribution to the book in relation to the substance of the book in general, a couple of remarks on process and how this book was, the final output was achieved and Adam has already said a few relevant things on this issue but I think just in my own experience compared to other edited collections which I participated, I was struck by three things. I mean, one was that Archie Bay and Justin Lin were, I think it's mainly Archie Bay, are one of the few indeed, I have to admit this has been one of the few individuals who has managed to make me stick to tight deadlines. I'm quite bad at that so that's attributable to him. The second characteristic is the organization of workshops both before the preparation of chapters but also for the review of draft chapters which is quite unique for the process of editing the book and I believe that's been the same process for the other books that have been showcased here before and that relates to the third point which is it's actually quite unusual to have such a strong peer review process for an edited volume, from an edited collection. In fact as a journal editor I have to say that the peer review process that most of these chapters went through was probably more demanding than the peer review process that you find in a lot of well-known academic journals and I think that attests to the seriousness with which this book was designed and also prepared. My own contribution to the book focused on issues of labour and starting from labour relations and workplace and counters. In Africa I come from African studies perspective and field and I've been working on labour issues in different African countries for several years and this particular chapter who was written before the final quantitative results of our very large project which we did in Ethiopia and Angola were released so we didn't have the final quantitative results of large-scale quantitative service but we did already have a feel of the kinds of things that we found in the ground through quality of research but also we did take stock of all the available evidence through critical appraisal of that evidence because there is a lot of evidence that is not particularly convincing or tends to be misleading on some of the issues related to employment dynamics and employment effects of engagement of Chinese actors but generally here we're talking about Chinese companies, Chinese firms in African countries so the chapter really is about the quantity as well as the quality of jobs and questions around employment creation, skill development but especially comparative evidence on jobs and in the process of writing this but also doing this research and that relates to broader content of the book. I was struck again coming from my African studies experience I was struck by two syndromes that affected deeply affected particularly media reporting but also a significant amount of scholarly published research on Africa-China issues. The first syndrome is methodological nationalism what this means is that we tend to, we have some people tend to assume intrinsic characteristics that are attached to the national origins of actors in this case for example is the flag of the company seems to have a significant impact on a number of issues in the case of our research on labor outcomes and I was struck by that because initially I'd never believed that I'm quite against methodological nationalism of this kind and I'm against it because it builds a syndrome of determinism of empirical determinism that is essentially built on assumptions that are not tested, assumptions about the intrinsic national characteristics of actors, firms and so on. This is a historical as well as non-contextual and in that respect highly problematic so that is one of the issues that we discussed in the chapter but I also think it's something common thread that arises throughout the book. There is a caveat to this which is that doesn't mean that national context doesn't matter of course national context matters but mainly in relation to host African countries so in order to understand for example labor outcomes it is far more important to understand the labor market context of individual African countries than the flag of the companies that are investing in these countries that is the issue. Together with of course a whole set of of wide diversity of confounding factors such as the sector in which these firms operate, the time that these firms have been in the country, the particular relations that they strike with the government but also with other parts of the private sector and so on and so forth and this is why the chapter proposes a different kind of analytical framework that looks at labor outcomes and the configuration of labor regimes as a result of a combination of three levels of analysis and factors one the national political economy the national context and the state institutions labor institutions in the country and so on legislation and implementation of the legislation. Secondly the level of the sector the sector matters a lot so if you if you're working on labor issues in manufacturing whether a company is integrated in a global production network and and supplying to big brands like Zara or H&M matters a lot in terms of how the pressures that come through these value chains are then passed on to the workers and the third level the micro level of raw labor encounters is where the employees and the employers meet and here there's all sorts of other factors that come into play some of them may be related to corporate culture which is not necessarily determined by nation or by the origin of the firm and in fact here and that takes me to the second point which is the second syndrome and that's Chinese exceptionalism that basically is a variant of this methodological nationalism it assumes specific characteristics in this case affecting labor regimes and types of firms and capital that are supposed to be unique to China or to Chinese firms in short this kind of syndrome consists of essentializing China which is as we all know a massively diverse country where you need to distinguish between different varieties of capital as Qin Quan Li has demonstrated in relation to state on enterprises versus private capital but even when you look at private firms there's a whole diversity of different kinds of firms I mean going back to the example of Ethiopia you have firms that are translocal Chinese entrepreneurs who have no business in China whatsoever set up the first business in Ethiopia firms that are integrated in global production networks and important exporters even within China and and with presence in other countries as well and other firms that have business in China but they come to Ethiopia or other African countries to take advantage of the domestic market so they're not exporient and all this has implications for the kinds of labor relations and labor outcomes that we find and I guess also for many other issues and this syndrome of Chinese exceptionalism which has already been debunked by well-established research especially on labor relations in China itself is often manifested in the field of Africa China relations by a very striking lack of comparative evidence there is a lot of research a lot of reporting on this is what the Chinese have done here the Chinese firms these and that not much about how this compared to local domestic firms to European western firms the Turkish Indian firms and so on and that is quite striking now the caveat here is that of course even though we do not accept this notion of Chinese exceptionalism there are particularities about China's engagement in in in African countries that are worth noting and some of them have been already commented by by our Kevin in his presentation we do see a difference when we compare with others in terms of the contribution to the development of economic infrastructure I mean that is a factual issue it is demonstrated by where finance is going what kinds of projects and what what kinds of infrastructure have been developed which is also important to compare with the past you know what happened to economic infrastructure in the 1980s and 1990s in many African countries the second particularity is the disproportionate contribution to investment in manufacturing something that is actually quite new the very few countries in Africa that have received any substantial investments into the manufacturing sectors and if you look at back at the 1980s and 1990s it's pretty much nothing and third as as our Kevin was pointing out China has a source of learning and again the question is not so much whether there's a Chinese model I think everyone agrees that there is no there isn't such a thing well at least the there isn't a model to replicate or to export but this the China as well as other countries Vietnam or Sri Lanka Indonesia are certainly sources of learning and that is what the countries where there is agency in Africa are trying to to use but all these contributions of these catalytic roles as has already been said are actually manifested quite differently across African countries are huge differences between Ethiopia and Angola for example we did the research in Ethiopia and Angola and and the differences in context are remarkable so I just wanted to end with a general comment about the book which I think is compared to other contributions to the field of Africa China engagement is not yet another general overview of China-Africa relations it does go further and deeper on on some of the issues that have been neglected in previous contributions notably questions around structural transformation structural change and the importance of diversity and context in in in understanding these processes and outcomes and in that sense I think it does provide substantial value added to what we know already from previous research thank you ladies and gentlemen I've been asked to say a few words of I own before throwing the floor open to comments and questions and I want to echo what Carlos just said this book does add substantially in terms of our technical appreciation of key issues in the China-Africa relationship I first began going to Ethiopia in the early 1990s after the overthrow of the Stalinist derig I was hoping to train with the new government the cabinet the parliamentarians in the high command many of whom had been rebel fighters and who had never had public administrative experience and so you can imagine on the first few visits my thinking are we going to be off the turn this into a technocratic nation and one of the very great pleasures of visiting Ethiopia has been to watch its progress in exactly this regard so that they can now exercise agency in their relationships with an economic superpower like China so that has been a huge pleasure watching the growth in the exercise of agency that is well informed well researched mature and confident in itself I've been writing as I said about China and Africa for quite some years and been debating also several times including with African trade delegations and watching the very very slow learning process in China too about how to appreciate African agency has also been a revelation so let's say there's been a learning curve on both sides which I think is going to lead to far better and more mature relationships between the two continents I want to echo what Carlos has said about the book the contributors are extremely distinguished including pioneers in the anglophonic literature on China and Africa people like Deborah Brotigan to whom the book is dedicated with whom I also have worked who's been a huge influence to correct largely American attitudes which are very very biased against the relationship between the two continents but from this country as well people like Crizzoldin people like Ian Taylor they're represented by old friend Fantu Cheru who's also published his own work on China and Africa this also in the book and what is a characteristic of the book is not just the depth of technical detail it's not only the stringency that's obviously been applied to the contributors along the lines that Carlos described but the fact that the majority of the contributors come from China or from Africa in other words this is not a bunch of westerners talking to China and Africa about China and Africa it's African and Chinese scholars and practitioners talking about their own views about the relationships which is germane to both continents in that sense this book is itself a major contribution to the idea of equality between the two continents and a very great contribution to the idea that actually we don't need too much outside criticism there's quite enough capacity and ability and willingness to try to create and to criticize ourselves so ladies and gentlemen I'm going to throw the floor open to questions when you are speaking can you do two things for me can you wait for the microphone to reach you and can you please say your name before you start asking your questions I'm going to recognize the gentleman first in the front row here please on the smart blue suit you my name is mr. Aynash Aynash Abdul Karim so basically my question relate to the model of development in Africa there is a lot of investments on China with its Chinese buildings but to be honest studying China and the high cost of high-speed modernization in terms of losing for example its access to healthcare which was loaded in the 1970s during the Alma Ata conference 1979 for its accessibility its primary care its primary care sector as well why can we not take the example of Cuba or Kerala in India which put the emphasis in state on population basic needs especially in healthcare biopharmaceuticals which Cuba has done very well they're exporting vaccine cancer medicines to America very easy to learn all the countries so why don't we just focus on the basic needs of Africa within Africa which is a big market now integrated instead of focusing on export to other foreign uh American market on other markets thank you thank you I'm going to take a float of three questions at a time hang away please the young lady in the red top so thank you so um so my my question I'm hung away I'm a PhD candidate as so as and so very nice when finally to meet you here and my question is somehow related to my own PhD project and as we know media also plays an very important role in in terms of economic development so but many Ethiopian journalists or commentators were released from the prison in the past one year but um some scholars that have been worried that the media freedom in Ethiopia will not last and they think Ethiopian journalists especially journalists from the mainstream media still have very little room to criticize the government and also the leadership so within the rising ethnic nationalism the country I would I'm wondering how much willingness does your government have in terms of democratize the media and what are the challenges how open and how critical or how much freedom will the Ethiopian media have in the next five or ten years thank you one more question please to end this float uh the young lady in the black yes indeed thank you so much for the panel Rob tell Nijie Paley Arkebe was in my PhD cohort so it's a fascinating um to see him in terms of his surge to five books I mean come on Arkebe you're making us very shamed um so my question is you alluded to the fact that um you know clearly China has an agenda or strategic agenda for the continent but the continent doesn't necessarily have a continental strategic agenda for for for for China and given how varied the relationships are between China and different countries on the continent what would a strategic agenda look like can you give us some concrete examples of what that would look like and what what it would entail uh thank you very much uh the first uh yeah the first uh comment uh and uh partly question is important one here what we are trying to say is not that uh we need to focus uh only on China Africa we are presenting the China Africa ties as one of the uh bigger south to south cooperation an additional alternative for African countries uh beyond their traditional partners Europe or the US uh so India is also part of this uh arrangement for instance India Africa does conduct summits every two to three years and uh Turkey Japan South Korea many European uh union members also are initiating this element on the importance of focusing on social uh services in particular hills is quite important if i may highlight one important lesson in a study done by egyptian government egyptian investment commission related with pharmaceutical industry uh because pharma industry is one of the sectors priority sectors in egyptia mainly to attract uh investors uh who would manufacture drugs in locally and a new specialized park has been built at calinto uh pharmaceutical hub in hadis ababa and study was conducted on four countries the south korea singapore singapore mainly because of the eco industrial uh system they have developed china and india and the research shows that in terms of pharma exports india offers the best example better than china in developing the pharma industry so lessons were uh taken and extracted and the new uh strategy on uh pharmaceutical manufacturing of Ethiopia which was endorsed in 2018 highlights that uh from the 27 billion markets for pharma products in africa utopia has put a strategy to target five billion or close to 25 percent uh because of the utopian airlines uh logistical network to many african countries as the continent uses similar drugs like that would be manufactured in utopia but it also was in recognition that you cannot just develop pharma for domestic consumption it requires economy of scale and within this perspective exporting to other african countries and local for local market has been uh combined so i think i i fully share what you uh highlighted in terms of media and uh and democratization i would say utopia does have a limited experience in this respect we have had uh an absolute monarch uh ruling the country uh not constitutional monarch but absolute monarch and the ruling in 1975 between 1975 and 1991 we had totalitarian uh military regime and since then 1995 we had a new uh constitution so it's uh the experience is 25 years and to be uh fair let's try to compare with europe where i mean democracy in uk has been going on for almost four five centuries or beyond that and many european countries as well 200 300 years and let's look at the two biggest toilet wars in the 20th century and let's see where nazism and fascism were able to arise it was in this continent in europe and we also see currently in many countries including the u.s and european countries uh that uh practicing democracy is quite a challenging a work in progress even countries with longer tradition so utopian government recognizes the constraints and limitations what uh is important is whether the progress is forward movement and whether there is some some progress but it's going to require a lot of effort on the uh strategic approach by african countries uh by the way she was uh my very best friend from livery and we always uh uh uh admire her for her initiative and she has produced uh td video clips quite popular and uh one of the questions when we're doing the phd study which i never forgot was uh a professor was teaching us ethics and uh she asked it how can we phd students publish our books and the professor uh replied she said do you know how many uh people read your thesis so all the students were expecting you know big number and he said only she said only three persons read on average your thesis your supervisor and the two examiners uh and and uh she wasn't happy about the answer so uh on the issue related with the strategic approach the key point is if the specific country does not have a strategy to diversify the economy to develop uh dynamic sectors uh if it doesn't have industrial policy to industrialize uh then it doesn't make strategic approach doesn't make sense first you have you need to have the spaces uh the second aspect is to see the potential uh that china can bring in and also the challenges and to uh best use this uh to that advantage there may be some countries who are built studies by chinese finance does this make sense it's our global uh but using that resource and finance to generate where new foreign exchange earnings can be uh generated or where new productive capacity can be generated will ultimately help to repay as these loans so here africa union needs to take initiative uh to guide this channel there are summits conducted the last one was in bejing and one thing i learned was the chinese has been uh using many think tanks to study the china africa studies many think tanks come to adis ababa and talk to me have been to bejing many times and they spend a lot of time to understand uh uh ideas perspectives to be brought to their central committee central committee of the communist party or epless congress so they have been doing a systematic uh research on how to improve and if we look at the focac seven the one that was conducted a year back in bejing many of the issues that were being raised even by western media uh were raised by chinese leaders uh the limitation with these think tanks and researchers is that mostly they use chinese researchers and this is a constraint because they have to use african researchers if they need to see from the length of africans so a lot of think tank a lot of research need to be uh conducted one of the key issues that is highlighted in this book is that more research needs to be done especially from the african end thank you uh yes the minister counselor from the embassy of china first please thank you steven actually you know i little has hesitated to raise my hand this is a academic you know room and i try to not be diplomatic neither academic there are so many phd's candidates phd's but i feel i obliged to a few words uh my intervention is more comments than questions actually you know during your presentation mr akipi you know it's really me a lot i was posed to zambia you know which is when you mentioned tanzara is quite familiar words to me you know it's record me it's really me uh my young memories young dreams you know as a young man we're not traveled by tanzara because it's a friendship it's friendship between china and afric deep seated in the people's heart you know it's really something you know people a man like my my age you know we kind of stand how deep you know the friendship between china and african people this is one word i must say here is that you know the historic relationship between our two continent and also uh our joint efforts our joint human or even sacrifice when we try to build our life when we call new life at that time so i think that the friendship and also the so-called economic transformation between you know i mean among china afric it deeply rooted in the people in the history and secondly you know ambassador tan is a very good friend to me so you know him quite well and i was here because he asked me to be here he told me that he was not posed to afric and you know when he was young he was like a guy he took somewhere better places but you know he asked me that you must go to go back to afric then you know what happened what changed in that continent that means afric is a continent is a place of full of hope it's a place that you know with all dreams it's so kind of you know shared future of mankind you know we are building a new world in afric so thank you very much i'm not ambassador mr abaki and thank you for your new new book and congratulations for your new books thank you very much thank you can we have just across the aisle here the lady in the yellow top please thank you my name is lilyan one i'm a lecturer in emerging markets at coventry university i would like to follow up on the question that was asked earlier about the continental strategy you mentioned a few conferences yes but what would it take for african policymakers african governments to come together and develop adopt a common approach a common position with regard to this issue of china africa relations and also what would it take for us africans to write our own story to write you know these i mean your book is does make a fantastic contribution to discussions but it is still considered we could still consider it an exception rather than the norm in terms of what africans are writing about the way they see the china africa or africa china relation thank you thank you and the young man and the great top just behind the okay thank you very much i'm sandiago uh postgraduate from i like c and when we talk about learning from china experiences it's not only about economies but also getting involved with the culture and the institution aspects so my question is how can you localize the successful experiences from china and how to integrate it then into asia opia context yeah could you just repeat the question and summarize the question please how can you localize the successful experiences from china and how to integrate it then into asia opia context thank you yeah the first uh question linked with the how africa could have common response is i mean the first issue would be experiential among african countries policy dialogue is important and as you mentioned it's this it's quite uneven among the policy making process in many african countries differs significantly so the first step to bridge this could be uh sharing experience among african policy makers and there has been some efforts in this direction also supported by africa union unica and also by european government i usually travel to different african countries and discuss with cabinet members on on experience both sides there is no perfect experience from one specific country the learning has to be matured so this is the first aspect the second one at continent level africa union needs to think how to support think tanks in africa that would be making studies on how this uh economic ties uh could be enhanced actually not only on china africa most recently we heard russia has also initiated the russia africa summit uh yeah so do we need the russian african summit for arm sale or do we need for uh productive investment is quite important issue so we need to encourage uh and and africa union should play an important role in uh in encouraging think tanks to to make studies and governments need to support psychic tanks as well the other issue related with the of china's experience is that china's experience cannot be copied uh the first thing is there is no chinese model that we need to be clear in this book we said we started there is no what is called baging consensus because there has been some claims that there is washington consensus and there is baging consensus and we say there is no analytical ground to claim there is sort of uh baging uh consensus so there is no chinese model and the chinese if you look at their history for the last 40 years uh what they have been able to achieve is an outcome of the learning they have uh they have they have been uh uh pursuing uh throughout these four decades the 1978 denki shopping uh was recognized as a reformer and as a leader and the key element that uh denki shopping tried to do was uh he traveled to singapore he traveled to japan actually in japan he visited panasonic factory and when he visited panasonic factory he understood china was two generations behind japan the chinese considered they are highly industrialized they are close to soviet union and they are competitive it was only when the leaders went and so and they sent many delegations to europe to france to west germany uh to uh u k uh to do studies what they understood was that they are generations park this created a passion an inspiration to uh to uh catch up the second aspect i related uh i raised the issue of singapore uh denki shopping went to singapore to study how singapore was able to attract fd i and uh also industrial parks especially economy zones is not a creation of china many of us assume special economic zones was created by the chinese model that's not the case actually there has been special economic zones in africa before 1978 in senegal uh in west africa and and the chinese leaders went to Sri Lanka uh they went to uh ireland they went to many places to study what they studied was export processing zones and the chinese were practical pragmatic they wanted to implement this reform but they said if we call it export processing zones people will assume it this is a capitalist pass so they came up with a special word uh special economic zones this is available in the literature on china uh and they started piloting at shenzhen they piloted in three four places and at the beginning it was mainly to attract fd i uh but later on it was primarily specialized in manufacturing sector and you will find science and technology uh parks in shenzhen in Beijing which are world class so chinese seriously learned from others and the way to approach taking lessons from uh from china uh i can explain to you by specific example in Ethiopia i've been traveling to china for many many years many policymakers have been traveling to shenzhen uh so they will tell you shenzhen was small village now it has turned to 15 million population and the size of shenzhen alone or guando province is if we uh compare it with many advanced economists maybe it's number six or number seven economy uh but it doesn't tell you much it's apian government what it did was when it wanted to use special economic zones as a component with this new industrialization approach the first thing the apian government put was we don't really know what industrial zones are we don't know what industrial parks are we don't know what special economic zones are there was only one park under construction in year 2010 eastern industrial zone and they faced many difficulties so the government decided to study special economic zones in africa we didn't only study china we study Nigeria Nigeria a negative experience of failure this is lucky free zone a zone developed by consortium of chinese and also lego's garment and the federal garment it took about 10 years to build but uh when the park was ready i had the opportunity to go and research on this park and in 2014 may there were 14 companies who have employed who were who employed that time 211 workers it was there was no energy in the park so what was clear was special economic zones was not part of industrialization strategy of nigerian garment and we also studied Mauritius Mauritius not only does have success story but also negative experience there is jen fei industrial park in Mauritius which is could not be said as a good success so we learned from these two countries and the way we learned was not official visit to go to lego's or abuja and then visit no that wasn't even the delegation we sent to nigeria garment authorities didn't know it i was there we went there studied for one week we talked to all who were in the park we took lessons in Mauritius we studied two weeks and then in asia we studied four countries we studied singapore we studied china we studied vietnam and south korea the way we studied china is different if a delegation is going to be led by a minister has to go to Beijing he has to be officially invited by a minister in terms of protocol so from Beijing airport he will be well received and then he will be guided to places he will have to visit so in 2014 we discussed with the chinese authorities we said we are not going to follow this way uh so we had we made a deal we agreed that uh as i was leading the delegation the research team we agreed i will not be using my diplomatic passport so i had to use ordinary passports traveled to hong kong then come to guandong province chong chi gian province jiansu for three weeks and we had many questions which we don't find in literature the chinese experience you wouldn't find it's not covered much in english literature and one of the questions was the chinese will tell you they had piloted four cities four industrial hubs at the beginning including shan jian what they don't really tell you is why did shan jian succeed while the others three didn't equally succeed and this answer is not possible to get it in documents even through interview because those who were involved at the early stage are now retired they are no more available so we had to find these people in many places and to discuss their experience so what i want to say is copying chinese experience is not going to work it requires learning requires systematic approach it requires localizing the experience and also not only looking at one specific experience but also combine different studies any other questions or comments from the audience yes we've got two here the gentleman here and the gentleman at the back there panel thank you very much for the discussion um okay be um can i direct this mcchu sorry finance background can i also very direct question state versus private investment i e is your dream of growth of africa becoming what it can be what it should be is it going to pivot on state involvement or private money thank you and gentlemen just stop there okay thank you very much for your presentation but on on the flip side there have been some allegations and some perhaps talks in the corridors that whenever there is a chinese development they do not respect the environment and they also do not respect the labour laws they build on wetlands did you find that in Ethiopia and the last question the gentleman here in the front in yep hi this is primarily to arkib and my name is mark bowland i'm an african economist in the private sector so my questions more specifically about Ethiopia i mean there has been argued that while it's clear that you know they have switched in the past few years from kind of very the state controlled model to liberalizing you know talking about the private privatizing or selling part of the telecoms monopoly are you possible could you comment on this and could this possibly open for a application to join the east african community which the drc has applied for and i think it's quite likely to be accepted how do you view that thank you very much on the labor issue and also environment respecting environment i think carlos may also assist me but here again the african agency element becomes critical the first thing is many of the project is infrastructure projects in egyptia some the studies were consul done by chinese consultants or instance some of the railway lines while some road roads and also power sessions feasibility studies or studies were done by western consulting firms so the critical issue here and including like you know industrial parks for instance uh from the five type of studies conducted environmental safeguard social safeguard is a critical element in the study so the first thing is is the process does the process clearly specify that these are rigorously followed this is a critical issue and i'm aware about experiences in like gana where there has been issues and complaints raised so the first thing is in many of these road projects i didn't find any difference between a western contractor or european contractor and chinese contractor or even japanese contractor in the execution of these projects that will convince people to say that the chinese are applying a lower level of approach or compliance so this is the first point i would like to highlight on the second issue the role of the state in the private uh there has never been economic growth or economic development even in uk where the state is not a critical player even the u.s most of the r&d and innovations researchers conducted in the u.s are financed by the u.s government by uh from defense budget nasa is entirely financed by the government so the critical issue is the state is important and a dynamic private sector is quite important so the critical issue would be what is the creative interaction between these two parties and it changes from time to time and another element that need to be highlighted is private sector performance is superior to state-owned uh performance doesn't hold water in many many examples can be proved if you look them apparently the most liberal country is singapore singapore has one of the best uh conducive investment policies or business climate it's ranking number one and multinationals all have their uh business in in singapore but singapore has more government linked companies than china the difference is these singaporean government has put the bar higher the corporate governance is of high standard they introduce a system that inefficiency and wastage is not allowed air singapore is government linked like egyptian airlines and in africa we have seen some state-owned airlines failing like south african airways private airlines failing like uh virgin nigeria failing we have also seen uh state-owned enterprise canine airways when it was owned failing when it was privatized failing miserably so the ownership doesn't tell much egyptian airlines is 100 percent state-owned 100 percent and its performance is improving from time to time first the competitive environment is quite important there must be a competition a pressure for competing for improving efficiency second one is if the government has to build an enterprise it must be disciplined or instance when our prime minister or president uses an aircraft of egyptian airlines because they don't have dedicated aircraft ministry of finance has to settle uh the bill every month so it's not prime minister can take aircraft and then go to paris for shopping that's not the case we have such examples in some african countries so disciplining uh is important the government must be disciplined on the issue of the liberalization to highlight briefly uh the government's approach is not driven by ideology if we refer at some of the projects in railway for instance the our government myself i have been former chairman of the board of egyptian railway corporation we have had many discussions with many investment groups encouraging them to build railway line private sector was entirely allowed to participate in railways telecom was closed yeah and it was a monopoly and the main rationale for the government and the ruling party was not because telecom by its nature should be owned by government its rationale was different the government saw telecom is a cash flow we have to use this revenue stream to build infrastructure so most of the railway new lines we have built including jibouti adis where 30 35 percent is financed locally by the european government it was the capital came from it a telecom it was mainly a pragmatic approach to use the uh these uh profits because it's a cash cow but while it became a monopoly the telecom uh uh company has become inefficient so the government has opened that in order to upgrade the technology the management system we need to attract uh foreign companies as well to take uh share in this telecom industry through joint venture approaches so the approaches are quite pragmatic i can talk more about it uh sector by sector or enterprise by enterprise but the key issues is it's not about liberalization it's not about ideological drive it's a pragmatic approach how do we ensure the economy continues to grow faster and for the government of ita epia which are where the economy has been growing double digit 10.5 for 15 years the biggest nightmare and challenges can we sustain this growth rate can we diversify the economy the population is growing by two million every single year twice the size of Mauritius every year can we create two million jobs we have 100 000 university graduates 70 000 of them engineers and technologies we are not creating sufficient jobs for them so this is a big challenge and this requires a dynamic private sector foreign direct investment especially the productive fdi as well as uh government's uh active involvement where necessary maybe just add a comment on these allegations on labor laws i think our research basically shows as i hinted at before that this methodological nationalism doesn't hold that in fact once you do some systematic comparisons across different players within sectors then you don't really find any systematic differences and generally i mean the sectors that we're looking at infrastructure building and um manufacturing um yeah by and large you know the the standards are within the existing national labor laws so i think the key question here goes back to the to the issue of african agency what we did find is that there are very big differences between for example the Ethiopian government and the Angolan government in terms of how seriously they take labor issues for example in relation to the question of localization of the labor force much higher in in Ethiopia than in Angola and the main reason for that is the work visa policy which is more strictly enforced in in Ethiopia compared to Angola and i would suggest they don't probably Angola similar to other cases so the the key issue is a what's the nature of labor laws labor legislation in each country but also how seriously the government takes labor implications for investments or construction infrastructure construction um in in in relation to all their priorities you know they are always all the priorities and that is the critical in so legislation as well as the implementation of that legislation for example if there is a need for a minimum wage let's say there's a serious question about you know where does it apply should we implement it in particular places or not is there a national minimum wage actually makes sense for all sorts of firms and also sectors and these kinds of questions unfortunately are not at the heart of police making debates in many African countries so it does go back to to African agency at the end thank you ladies and gentlemen the organizers have asked me to finish this part of the session now this doesn't mean that discussion has come to an end because they should continue in an informal way of the drinks outside you also you can buy a KP's book and i'm sure he'd be pleased to talk to you as well as sign his book uh mr yang i also had a diplomatic posting in Zambia when we were both young men i'm sure we'll be inadvertently shared a drink at the embassy in those days so you and the other diplomatic colleagues and everyone else please why don't we all have a drink together to celebrate a wonderful evening let us applaud your