Chinese goods have replaced many local items and other imports in African markets. However, travel bans and logistics blockages under Covid encumbered import from China. This panel examines changes in African manufacturing and trade systems following disruptions in China-Africa supply chains.
Long Abstract:
China has become the principal source country for manufactured goods in Africa. Some of the Chinese imports have replaced locally manufactured products while others compete against imports from countries outside Africa. This panel examines how the Covid-induced disruptions in import from China have influenced African production and trading systems. The flows of goods, people, and money between African countries and China have mutually sustained each other. Human mobility between Africa and China virtually halted after the Covid pandemic due to strict travel prohibitions on the part of the Chinese. What happened with imports from China during this period? Have importers found new ways of organizing sourcing, quality assurance, packing, and payments for goods to compensate for blockades against travel between factories in China and end markets in Africa? Or have they redirected their purchases to competing global trade hubs, such as Istanbul, Dubai, and Bangkok? Similarly, we ask whether manufacturers and artisanal producers based in African countries, including Chinese-owned production facilities, were able to profit from the supply chain disruptions in Chinese goods and (re)gain market shares. In cases where limited supply from China provided new market opportunities for locally produced goods, to what extent can these advantages be sustained once trade normalizes? Furthermore, intensified economic entanglements with China mean that African producers depend on Chinese inputs, both machinery and intermediary materials for production. Considering this, is it possible or desirable to envision a future for production in Africa that is decoupled from China?
This paper examines how COVID-19 has restructured Sino-African trade relations. As limited capital and human mobility affected trade flows, African and Chinese traders sought creative ways to continue their business. The paper identifies some of the creative methods implemented.
Paper long abstract:
In 2020, the flow of Chinese imports to Nigeria was threatened due to reports of violence that Nigerians in Guangzhou were facing. Geoffrey Onyeama, the Nigerian Foreign Minister, admonished the Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria, Zhou Pingjian. Beijing issued a statement promising to investigate the issue and ensure continued prosperous relations between both countries. The message was clear. China had to change its treatment of Nigerians on its soil or lose $12 billion of export revenue.
COVID-19 has reshaped the Sino-African relationship. Capital and Human mobility between Africa and China virtually halted as the pandemic spread due to strict travel prohibitions on the part of the Chinese. This situation restructured the relationship between both regions politically and economically. As a result, African and Chinese traders sought creative ways to continue their business. Using case studies, this paper identifies some creative methods implemented by Chinese and African traders operating out of Guangzhou and Africa. The data will be quantitative to track trade flows and qualitative to track sentiment, perception and personal actions.
Did China’s border closure during Covid give space for local Ghanaian producers to thrive? The paper uses interviews with Ghanaian plastic manufacturers, furniture makers, and coffin carpenters to explore the effects of supply chain disruptions from China.
Paper long abstract:
A common assumption about Chinese imports is that they replace local production for low-end goods in developing countries. The import of consumer goods from China to West Africa has been closely linked to commercial travel, and China’s border restrictions during the Covid outbreak put a near-halt to such travelling. Moreover, the pandemic led to a global logistics crisis that disrupted supply chains from China. This presentation asks whether Ghanaian manufacturers and artisanal producers were able to take advantage of these disruptions to increase their competitive position. Did China’s border closure give space for local Ghanaian producers to thrive? We address these questions by drawing on data collected among Ghanaian plastic manufacturers, furniture makers, and coffin carpenters, who all have faced competition from Chinese imports. Our analysis shows that supply chain disruptions from China had direct impact through the substitution of the products previously imported from China and indirect effects as traders’ capital was freed up to be reinvested in Ghanaian production. However, the supply chain disruptions were also costly for many Ghanaian producers, as they depended on Chinese intermediary products, tools, and other inputs. The case illustrates how economic lives in Ghana and China are so deeply intertwined that indiscriminate decoupling is neither possible nor desirable.
China’s pandemic closure has strengthened the constellation of wholesale markets situated in manufacturing hubs in the Global South. This paper examines the resiliency demonstrated by Congolese traders as they pivot their commerce activities to alternative destinations such as Turkey.
Paper long abstract:
As there is little industry in many sub-Saharan African countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), one that boasts a consumer base of over ninety million people, the majority of manufactured goods are imported from abroad. Given this dependency on imports, many people are intimately aware of the oscillating rhythms of trade connected to global supply chains, as they themselves are often embedded in some aspect of local supply chains.
African traders frequent a constellation of international wholesale markets situated in manufacturing hubs in the Global South. This paper describes how China’s pandemic closure has prompted traders, particularly women from the DRC, to pivot their commerce activities to alternative destinations within the already existing trading constellation such as Turkey. It explores some of the macro and granular conditions that have allowed for the mobility of women involved in cross-border trade. While the rhythms of trade and migration have been affected by the pandemic, African traders have continued traveling abroad in the search of goods to import, pointing to the resiliency of their businesses and networks.
This work seeks to study how the pandemic has reinforced the place occupied by Turkey. How Istanbul becamethe destination for bussinessers following the closing of Chinese borders. What lessons for African economies to get out of manufacturing dependence, and buid autonomous industrialization?
Paper long abstract:
Over the past two decades, academic circles have expressed great interest in Sino-African relations. However, Chinese presence in Africa will encourage other powers such as India or Turkey to develop their own competing African policy. Taking advantage of the consequences of Covid 19, marked by a tightening of entry measures in China, Turkey has succeed in positioning itself as one of the most significant players in Senegal over the past ten years to the point of making China and Chinese companies lose significant market shares. Indeed, the Summa Group has completed a vast infrastructure program for a total amount of 3US$ billion. This reinforced the new place occupied by Turkey during the pandemic, and en 2021, trade between Senegal and Turkey reached US$ 540 million, with the objective for Turkish leaders to reach US$ 1 billion. Istanbul has, thus, become the preferred destination for Senegalese economic operators during the pandemic following the closing of Chinese borders.
This work seeks to study how Senegalese traders redeploy in the face of Chinese border closing. Considering the asymmetrical nature of trade, are these new trade routes inscribed in a dependence of African economies on the? What lessons for African economies vying to get out of manufacturing dependence, and consider autonomous industrialization?
From my perspective as a long-time observer, researcher, and a Chinese volunteer in a civil aiding operation, I recorded the tension in this panic from different stakeholders and perspectives and to reflect the African lives during the early days of 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in Guangzhou.
Paper long abstract:
This paper recreated the panic scene that happened during the COVID-19 pandemic in Guangzhou, China. From 4 April to 13 April, 2020, all 4,553 Africans in Guangzhou were PCR-tested. 111 of them were COVID-19 positive. Being excluded from the disease control system, the outbreak of COVID-19 in African communities led to a rebound of quarantine. Almost all Africans were affected by the panic, both physically and mentally. People were expelled by individual landlords, quarantined by the National Health Centre, and faced the racist threat from social media, because of their ethnicity. However, in the panic, we witness the paralysis of the informal social networks that the African community relied on and the emerging new social networks that support Africans. I displayed two stories at the early stage of the 2020 panic: the aiding programme from Nigerian wives and my one-day experience with Frank. The story marks the start of three-year lockdown of China, and the refugee-like lives of thousands of African traders in China.
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