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Opinion: There Is No Singular “Chinese Model” For Africa’s Agriculture Sector

Opinion: There Is No Singular “Chinese Model” For Africa’s Agriculture Sector

In his visit to South Africa in December 2015, China’s President Xi Jinping made several investment announcements amounting to over $70 billion, most of them  in Agriculture.

But while Chinese investment on the continent has been hailed for helping many African countries develop the required infrastructure, there are some that say the hype many not be all that.

According to Ian Scoones, Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, data on what Chinese firms are doing in Africa’s agriculture sector is very hard to come by and where it is accessible it is still “very confusing”.

“Our original idea of doing a simple geomapping exercise based on available data was quickly abandoned. Instead, we had to triangulate between multiple sources to find out what was happening where,” Soones said in an opinion piece published by eNCA.

In his study, Scoones investigated Chinese investment in four African countries —  – Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe — which have features prominently for investment and aid from the Asian economic giant.

The research showed that there was no singular ‘Chinese model’ in these countries and the performance of Chinese projects depend on who was managing them.

While some projects have been faced by conflict and disapproval for local communities, others have had a smooth run and have become very successful.

There are also several agriculture training sessions carried out by different Chinese companies operating in Africa. None of these training programs are the same and they all have different impact on the trainees.

The training of government officials is an important aspect of the Chinese engagement in Africa. More than 10,000 are trained in numerous courses in China each year, many in agriculture. This far exceeds any training initiative of any western aid programme.

Scoones says there is a misconception on how many Chinese immigrants are involved in the agri-food sector — from farm to processing to restaurant — in Africa.

Most of the migrants involved in Africa’s agriculture are mostly focused on specialist Chinese food production for a growing Chinese population and restaurants.

“Those involved are very often migrants who came as part of Chinese government contracts, and have since established business connections and stayed, encouraging others to join them from China,” he said.