A four-day expo can announce billions in deals. The harder question is how many of those handshakes survive contact with shipping schedules, payment terms and a small firm’s first export.
Section
Economics
Made in Africa, sold to China: why zero tariffs are only the doorway
China has thrown the door open to African goods. Walking through it with finished products, rather than raw ore, is the harder task that no tariff schedule can do for the continent.
Botswana Joins SADC Development Fund and Finance Protocol
President Boko signed to operationalise the SADC Regional Development Fund on 1 April 2026, making Botswana the tenth member. Why the threshold matters.
China’s vanishing factory jobs: Africa’s chance, if it can catch them
The World Bank has floated 85 million manufacturing jobs leaving China as wages rise. Whether Africa captures a meaningful share is a question of readiness, not destiny.
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.
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.
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.
SADC and Japan Forge Pact on Infrastructure, Trade and Security
SADC and Japan signed a Gaborone memorandum on 9 April 2026 spanning infrastructure, trade, investment and security. What the pact means for Botswana.