The Sino-African investment discourse in the broader topic of African development has two major narratives: Firstly, China as the savior of Africa’s development after decades of failed Western development aid, and secondly, China as the devil, who exploits poor weak African states. For a bachelor thesis, I went to explore the perceptions involved in this issue in the Zambian construction sector.

After plenty of research and an extensive literature review, the dominant position in (Western) academia seems to perceive China as the devil, who exploits African states. Chinese involvement in Africa does not live up to Western standards in terms of labor standards, safety standards and environmental standards. This is a general problem with foreign partners, but Chinese firms stand out as the scape-goat. While doing research locally in Zambia, I did not find these problems even after searching hard for these problems.

I went to Zambia assuming huge issues in terms of safety, sustainability, labor rights, and environmental issues, because that is what I have learned from academia and media. But wherever I went, people spoke highly of their Chinese partners. Chinese firms bring capacity in terms of skills, knowledge, and capital, and they get along quite well with the local population. This was different some years back, when Zambian workers ended up killing Chinese foremen in a conflict, but the situation has calmed down and Zambians appreciate the Chinese again. In specific cases, there were people in the streets, hoping to find work with Chinese firms, there were workers on construction sights, who described the Chinese foreman to be like a father to them, and there were sub-contractors, who claim that without the Chinese, there would not be any work at all.

How can it be that the perceptions drift so far apart and what does it mean for the discourse of Chinese involvement in Africa? Firstly, we should be careful, who the so-called problem owner is. Is it the Zambian people, who struggle to find jobs, or is it the Western ideologists, who want a perfect world with equality and prosperity for everyone? Secondly, and this should not be surprising, how do we talk about an issue, that is so very distant to us (Western Academics)? Thirdly, should we be more open to other paths of development, meaning that we might need to compromise on some issues?

While being in Zambia, I discovered that there are other issues more important than how the Chinese do business in Africa. Zambia first needs to improve their education system, provide capital to entrepreneurs, and work on stable institutions, to name three major issues. Making China the scape-goat might be easy, but it is too easy and does help neither the discourse, nor African countries.

The limitations of the data at hand is that it is only a small sample population collected over a short period of time in a very limited geographical space. Also, the construction sector is special in its contract based nature, which helps to enforce standards and regulation, because of a third party, which audits construction sights and because breaching a contract comes with high costs.  But still, the difference in perceptions of (Western) academics and the local population should make us think.

If you would like to read the full paper or want to get a list of my sources, feel free to contact me via the comment section and I will get back to you.