Photo: Benedicte Kurzen for The New York Times
The New York Times reports on a rising surge of Chinese people (mostly from mainland China) choosing Africa as their continent of choice for living and doing business.
Today, in many of the countries where the new Chinese emigrants have settled, like Chad, Chinese-owned pharmacies, massage parlors and restaurants serving a variety of regional Chinese cuisines can be found; the Western presence, once dominant, has steadily dwindled, and essentially consists nowadays of relief experts working international agencies or oil workers, living behind high walls in heavily guarded enclaves.
Yang Jie owns the largest ice cream parlor in Africa. I found the following statement particularly amusing, especially since this is probably the same exact sentiments that many Chinese people have when they think of Africa.
“Before I left China,†said Mr. Yang, now 25, “I thought Africa was all one big desert.†So he figured that ice cream would be in high demand, and with money pooled from relatives and friends, he created his own factory at the edge of Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital. The climate is in fact subtropical, but that has not stopped his ice cream company from becoming the country’s biggest.
Here’s the New York Times slideshow of Chinese working in Africa.
Although the article does address certain concerns that Africans have against the Chinese, like how some Africans are treated by Chinese busiinessmen and fears of Chinese people taking over local jobs, the gist of the bad threads are isolated. Generally, it sounds like Africa is a great place to start a business.
