Paper short abstract:

Chinese enterprises played an instrumental role in initiating and facilitating African industrial policy implementation. Based on fieldwork in China and Ethiopia, this paper provides a unique angle on the agency of Chinese companies as 'policy diffusers' in African economic zone implementation.

Paper long abstract:

[this paper has a co-author Dr. Hong Zhang] Developing countries around the world have adopted industrial parks as a tool for attracting investment and promoting development, and African countries are among the latest to join this trend. Existing research on the foreign influence of African industrial policy concentrate on the foreign government or international organizations' role in policy advising. This research finds that Chinese enterprises played an instrumental role in initiating and facilitating industrial policy implementation, a previously understudied area. With a particular focus on the agency of Chinese companies as the "policy diffusers," we develop a typology of Chinese companies involved in the development of African industrial parks. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Ethiopia and China, we study Ethiopia's industrial park initiation and implementation, using Hawassa Industrial Park as a case study. We find that the several crucial features of Ethiopia's industrial park policy could be attributed to the mediating role of the Chinese company involved. This particular group of construction and engineering contractors are distinguished by their long history of operating in Africa dating back to the 1970s, and are increasingly active in developing industrial parks in Africa and beyond. We argue that the profound impact of these companies as policy diffusers is due to their structural position as "national champions" in the Chinese political economy, which affords them unique capacity in mobilizing resources from China.