Elsevier

World Development

Chinese Migrants in Africa: Facts and Fictions from the Agri-Food Sector in Ethiopia and Ghana

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Open access

Summary

This paper makes an empirical and ethnographic contribution to the literature on Chinese migrants in Africa past using five instance studies to explore their role in the agri-food sector in Federal democratic republic of ethiopia and Republic of ghana. We find that the realities of Chinese migrants in this sector matches neither pop media stereotypes of empire building and country grabbing, nor Chinese government narratives of Southward–S cooperation, technology transfer, and agricultural evolution. Far from being a "silent army" promoting larger Chinese land objectives, they operate independently and serve no agenda other than their own. Many migrants have little if whatever contact with the Chinese Diplomatic mission or other official Chinese presence in Africa. While none of our informants accept received support from the Chinese government, they are nonetheless affected past government regulatory frameworks in African countries and their activities are shaped accordingly. The regulatory policy environment is very different in the two countries, and this has implications for the livelihood strategies of Chinese migrants. While the impacts of their presence on local development are modest overall, these impacts practise announced to be positive in the sense that they are creating economical opportunities, both for themselves and for local people.

Keywords

Agri-food

Migrants

China

Africa

Ethiopia

Ghana

Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published past Elsevier Ltd.