China has thrown the door open to African goods. Walking through it with finished products, rather than raw ore, is the harder task that no tariff schedule can do for the continent.
Section
Economics
Two Trillion: How SARS Hit a Record Haul While Tightening the Net on Trusts
SARS reported record R2.010 trillion net revenue for 2025/26, up 4.2%, while imposing trust filing penalties from 4 May 2026. Enforcement, not a boom.
South Africa’s Informal Economy Is a Supply Chain, Not a Side Street
Migrant-run spaza shops are nodes in a supply chain of SA wholesalers, landlords, workers and brands. Why to measure second-order losses, not just shopfronts.
Botswana Joins SADC Development Fund and Finance Protocol
President Boko signed to operationalise the SADC Regional Development Fund on 1 April 2026, making Botswana the tenth member. Why the threshold matters.
China’s vanishing factory jobs: Africa’s chance, if it can catch them
The World Bank has floated 85 million manufacturing jobs leaving China as wages rise. Whether Africa captures a meaningful share is a question of readiness, not destiny.
Diamniadio: Senegal’s bet that a Chinese garment line can build an industry
Senegal spent about US$44m on a park outside Dakar and pinned 23,000 jobs on it. The first anchor tenant is a Chinese factory sewing T-shirts for the American market.
Huajian in Ethiopia: A Shoemaker as the Test Case for Industrial Linkage
A Chinese shoe firm exporting Ethiopian-made footwear to the US and Europe is the model linkage story – and the clearest evidence of how hard local sourcing actually is.
Private Chinese Parks: Ethiopia’s Export Bet, Built Largely by Outsiders
Ethiopia’s drive to become Africa’s top manufacturer leans on private, often Chinese-owned zones. They have delivered factories and exports – and a dependence on foreign developers to build them.
Eastern Industrial Zone: A Chinese Park Counted in Jobs, Not Just Square Metres
A Chinese-built park 35km from Addis Ababa was meant to seed 20,000 local jobs. By late 2017 it had created roughly 10,000 – a real number, and a measure of the distance left to travel.