From Mail & Guardian.

China’s investment of $35 million in a new consumer electronics factory in Cape Town represents a trend towards greater export of value-added products from South Africa to China, according to South African Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel.

The Chinese state-owned company Hisense opened last week in Cape Town, producing LED TVs and refrigerators destined for sub-Saharan Africa, according to a report in Mail & Guardian.

In the past, South Africa has mostly imported manufactured goods from China, and China has imported raw minerals from South Africa, the report said. But since signing the Beijing Declaration in 2010, the two countries have worked to increase the export of value-added products from South Africa to China, according to the Mail & Guardian report.

The Cape Town factory is expected to create direct 600 jobs and 1,000 more indirect jobs with 300 people already hired in the first phase of operations.

South Africa imported TVs and projectors worth $175 million from China in 2012, 19 percent less than in 2008 and 34 percent less than in 2011, the report says.

A number of Chinese companies already operate in South Africa, making for a solid foundation for Chinese investment there, said Lu Quincheng, vice president of the China-Africa Development Fund, in an interview at Mail & Guardian. These include a factory in Springs in to assemble Beijing Automobile Works taxis and a $60 million investment by First Automobile Works in a truck-assembly plant in the Eastern Cape.