Joint Labs: The Quiet Infrastructure China Is Building Without Concrete
Intellectual - Foresight & Big Ideas · Editorial By Moakanyi Magazine · China-in-Africa · June 2026 The visible China-Africa story is poured in concrete: ports, rail, power. The more durable story may be the one you cannot photograph. According to China's...
Early-Warning Systems: Two Islands, One Test of Resilience Infrastructure
Economics - Global & Regional · Editorial By Moakanyi Magazine · China-in-Africa · June 2026 The headline green projects are measured in megawatts and billions. The early-warning component is measured in storms anticipated and droughts prepared for - and it may...
Africa Solar Belt: A Demonstration Pledge Meets a 600-Million Access Gap
Economics - Industry & Resources · Editorial By Moakanyi Magazine · China-in-Africa · June 2026 The Africa Solar Belt arrives wrapped in the language of access, but the early ledger reads more like a demonstration than a rollout. Proposed by China in September...
Cheap and Clean: Can Low-Cost Renewables Make African Factories Competitive
Economics - Trade & AfCFTA · Editorial By Moakanyi Magazine · China-in-Africa · June 2026 Clean energy is usually sold as a climate story. In Africa, the more consequential pitch is industrial. Manufacturers compete on the cost of power as much as the cost of...
Selling Sunlight Downhill: Ethiopia and Djibouti Wire a Regional Power Trade
Economics - Trade & AfCFTA · Editorial By Moakanyi Magazine · China-in-Africa · June 2026 Two countries with opposite problems make a market. Ethiopia has more hydropower than its own grid can absorb; Djibouti has almost no generation of its own and already buys...
CADFund: The state vehicle quietly underwriting China’s Africa investments
A China Development Bank fund built to coax Chinese firms into Africa has committed roughly US$7.6bn across 39 countries. Its job is less to spend than to make others spend.
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.
The TEDA template: What a Suez park reveals about exporting Chinese industry
China did not just build a factory in Egypt – it copied a whole development model from Tianjin to the Red Sea. Whether that template travels to the rest of Africa is the real test.
TEDA Suez: How a Chinese desert zone became Egypt’s industrial showpiece
A patch of Red Sea Gobi was meant to lure factories away from the Suez Canal’s shadow. Two decades on it hosts nearly 200 firms – and a set of questions about who the industrialisation is really for.
Industrial Parks as Gateways: Ethiopia’s FDI Bet, Measured at the Exit
Ethiopia’s parks pulled in record FDI and tens of thousands of jobs. The IFC’s diagnostic is admiring and wary in the same breath: the gateway works, but the road past it is congested.
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.
Learning Zones: Chinese Parks Transfer Plenty of Jobs, Less of the Knowledge
Chinese zones in Ethiopia are pitched as classrooms for industrialisation. The evidence shows they teach hands well and managers rarely, leaving the deeper learning largely unrealised.
China’s Zone Playbook: An Export, but One That Resists Copy-Paste
China turned four coastal experiments into a growth engine and now markets the recipe to Africa. The World Bank’s own verdict is that the method travels far better than the results.
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.
Dukem’s Wager: What One Chinese Industrial Zone Taught Ethiopia About Factories
A private Chinese developer bet US$180 million on a field outside Addis Ababa in 2007. What grew there became a test of whether Africa can host the factory floor.
Grow or Green: Where Chinese Energy Lands in Africa’s Two Imperatives
Africa is told to cut emissions and to grow, at once. Chinese energy projects sit on the seam between those demands – and which way they tilt has shifted.
Generate, Carry, Build: Reading Africa’s Power Sector as One Chain
Generation, transmission and industry are usually budgeted in separate columns. The output of each is the input of the next – which is why the weakest link sets the pace.
The Wires Between: Why Transmission Earns Its Own Story, Not a Footnote
New power plants get the headlines. The lines that carry their output get a clause at the end. That ordering hides where Africa’s electricity is actually lost.
Power as Productivity: Why Africa’s Energy Gap Is a Jobs Problem First
Energy access is usually counted in households connected. The sharper measure is what unreliable power does to the firms and workers who already have a line.
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