School Construction: World Bank versus China

In The Dragon's Gift, I made the argument that the Chinese approach to funding aid projects employs a high degree of financial control. As one African official told me: "with the Chinese, you never see the money." This has drawbacks for ownership, but is likely to mean that corruption and embezzlement is lower with Chinese aid, and the promised projects actually get built. Maintenance of course is another issue, something I also addressed in the book.

A school in Tanzania         credit: Worldcrunch.org

      Over the past six years, the Chinese government has been fulfilling a commitment to build 100 (or so) primary schools across Africa. My (so far minimal) anecdotal research in two countries on this has turned up an interesting phenomenon: at least one school out of the typical three built in a given country has been located in the home town of the country's leader. The schools are also typically of a much higher, gold-plated standard, something that is a showpiece, but difficult to sustain.
Both of these findings support my argument that Chinese aid is all about politics, symbolism, and soft power -- and not a simple swap-for-resources, as it has often been portrayed. 
     How do we do it in the West? This morning I've been reading a dissertation by one of my students, Ryan Briggs. At one point he gives the startling example of a World Bank funded school construction project in Malawi. 
     Briggs reports that of the World Bank's target of 1600 classrooms, half were never built, and according to the World Bank's own report, 340 of the 858 classrooms that were built were "left unfinished ... implementation of this component was unsatisfactory and contributed to the premature depletion of funds" (World Bank, 2001: 8).  Further, "the Government failed to provide the necessary oversight ... accounts were not well maintained ... records were not properly kept ..." (2001: 15). 
     Neither approach seems terribly satisfactory for making an impact on education. But in terms of financing school construction, the Chinese at least are dealing pragmatically with governance as it is, rather than governance as we wish it to be.

A h/t to Ryan Briggs.

Source:  World Bank (2001) "Implementation completion report (IDA-28100; pp -p9380)
primary education project on a credit in the amount of SDR 15.1 (US$ million
equivalent) to the Republic of Malawi for a primary education project." Technical
report, World Bank.

Eastern Promise (and Eastern Errors) in Little Africa

Kit Gillett at The Global Mail interviewed me for a January 25, 2013 feature story on Africans in China, "Eastern Promise in Little Africa." The article is extremely well-written. Kit took a lot of care, and created a fascinating piece of work, with a number of interviews and photos. It looks like a good, balanced human interest story. However, even a careful reporter like this can get things wrong in presenting the big picture that frames the story. 

credit: Jeffrey Lau           Guangzhou's Little Africa

Early in the article, Kit writes "In recent years China has invested heavily in infrastructure projects across Africa, often in exchange for subsidies on natural resources." Yes, many Chinese companies have been building infrastructure projects, some $35 billion per year, but these are rarely Chinese "investments" -- they're construction contracts. Only about 20 to 25 percent are financed by Chinese banks or the Chinese government. As for the idea that this is "often" done "in exchange for subsidies on natural resources", I have yet to see a case where a Chinese firm got a subsidy on natural resources in exchange for building infrastructure. (If anyone has seen such a case, please comment). When natural resource exports enter into a construction deal (and this is quite rare) they enter in as a way to secure the loan with an export stream. In the cases I have seen, the exports are priced by the market**. We can't call this an off-take arrangement, as often there is no relation between the export stream and the construction project. But it operates in a parallel manner.

Toward the end of the article, Kit makes another error, in saying that "China has made efforts to promote friendship. China directly invested USD45 billion in the region in the first six months of 2012 alone."

Anyone who tracks FDI figures knows this is way wrong. In all of 2012, according to official figures at MOFCOM, China's entire overseas investment to the world amounted to USD77 billion:

 In 2012, Chinese investors made direct investment overseas in 4,425 enterprises in 141 countries and regions. Direct investment overseas amounted to US$ 77.22 billion, up by 28.6% year-on-year. Of which equity investments and other investments were US$ 62.82 billion, accounting for 81.4%, and earnings reinvested were US$ 14.4 billion, accounting for 18.6%.

As I noted in a recent presentation at New York University, Chinese direct investment in Africa is generally only a small fraction of that in the rest of the world: on average, maybe 5 percent. The total stock of Chinese FDI in Africa amounts to about USD14.5 billion, by official figures (unofficially it is likely higher, but not enormously so). I don't know where Kit got the preposterous figure of USD45 billion for just six months of flows. Possibly it was in Foreign Policy Journal, where a similar figure was posted. But it's a reminder that even when doing great micro-level research, it's important to make equal effort to present the big picture correctly.

A hat-tip to Yanyin Zi.
---------
**Angola presents an exception, where from what I can tell, CIF, a Hong Kong-based broker enjoying a joint venture with Sonangol, Angola's state-owned oil company, seems to have gotten oil cheaply and sold it on at market rates to the Chinese -- but that's not "China" getting a subsidy)

New Report on China Development Bank

Adina Matisoff has come up with another hard-hitting look at Chinese development bank's overseas financing for Friends of the Earth and BankTrack: China Development Bank’s overseas investments: An assessment of environmental and social policies and practices. Here's a synopsis of the report, from a blog posting by Michelle Chan: 

"As one might guess, CDB is a major financier of natural resource and infrastructure projects abroad. The report dives into four examples of CDB’s overseas transactions: the Alberta tar sands, the Shwe oil and gas project in Burma, Reliance Power’s ultra mega coal power plants in India, and Asia Pulp and Paper’s notorious logging activities in Indonesia. As evidenced by these ‘Dodgy Deals,’ CDB’s portfolio is as full of environmentally and socially risky projects as any of its international peers. But critically, CDB’s environmental and social policies fall short compared to its competitors.

However, a new China Banking Regulatory Commission Directive offers some hope. A few years ago, the CBRC launched an impressive new policy, the Green Credit Policy, which essentially requires Chinese banks to ensure that large, environmentally risky projects are in compliance with environmental laws before the banks lend them money. The policy was the first of its kind in the world, but it was really oriented towards ensuring that projects in China were compliance with Chinese law. But in February 2012, the CBRC issued a new Directive to the Green Credit Policy, which specifically instructs Chinese banks to adhere to international environmental and social financing standards in overseas transactions.

The new directive provides an opportunity for communities around the world affected by Chinese bank-financed deals -- such as the massive Rio Blano mine in Peru or the Merowe dam in Sudan -- with a leverage point to stop or improve an environmentally and socially sensitive project.The Directive also offers sustainable finance advocates both in China and internationally a chance to promote the implementation of this pioneering new banking regulation, and to work with a new group of globally important banks.

Finally, it allows those promoting international social, environmental and financial norms -- such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative on revenue transparency, the Equator Principles for project finance, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples --  to enlist the participation of powerful Chinese players that have been generally absent from these initiatives."

It's high time that the big Chinese banks step up to the plate on the Equator Principles. A hat-tip to Richard Carey.

Sweet and Sour: China and Africa Behind the Headlines

Here's a link to an interview highlighting some of my general work on China and Africa, broadcast by the Australian program Up Close. There still seems to be strong demand for this kind of overview topic. Old news for the small group of people now doing research on China's African engagement. Frankly, much more interesting to drill down into specific topics: agricultural engagement and special economic zones are two I'm working on now.

Is US FDI to Africa more transparent than China's?

Guess which country, the United States or China, refused to release official data on its firms' investments in resource-rich Libya, Chad, Gabon, Guinea, Mozambique, Uganda and Zimbabwe in 2010?

If you guessed China, you'd be wrong. Yes, it was the U.S.

I have long made the point that the Chinese data on foreign direct investment (FDI) to Africa does not reflect the reality. Yes, official data is openly published (unlike aid, which remains very secretive). And yes, since 2002, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has reported outward FDI using the standard OECD/IMF definitions of FDI. Yet because of exchange controls, and because so much FDI goes through tax havens (like Hong Kong, the British Virgin Islands, and the Cayman Islands) it is nearly impossible to track the ultimate
destination.

I always assumed that the US was a lot better in this regard. I was wrong. At least as posted on the website of the OECD's statistics bureau, the US claimed that 2010 FDI data by US companies in twelve African countries (almost all resource-rich) was "confidential". What's more, in 2010 the second most popular destination for US FDI flows to Africa was ... Mauritius (a tax haven) where US firms sent $1860 million.

Surely we can do better than this!

Links I Liked

Happy New Year from China in Africa: The Real Story. Here are a few recent links to interesting material on China in Africa, China and Global Governance, and one (short) new piece of mine:

Michael Geiger and Chorching Goh, "Chinese FDI in Ethiopia" World Bank. A report of a survey taken in mid-2012 of 69 Chinese enterprises active in Ethiopia. This is a good example of real information, painstakingly collected via fieldwork. Too often analyses of Chinese FDI simply report figures from African offices of investment promotion. These can bear little resemblance to actual investment.

Li Liu,  "Land Acquisition in Africa for Agricultural Purposes: The case of sugar cane plantation and sugar mill in Ethiopia," master's thesis at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. This case study analyzes the potential profitability of an investment that has, in fact, not (yet) gone forward. It's technically sophisticated but from my end, raises more interesting questions: if it was so profitable on paper, why didn't this investment go forward?

Herman Wasserman, "China in Africa: A Long Affair," Rhodes Journalism Review, No. 32 Reports on a content analysis of South African media reporting on China, other BRICs, and European/Western powers. Content was more balanced than expected.

Deborah Brautigam, "Is China Causing Africa's Free Press Problem?" a short commentary published by Rhodes Journalism Review, No. 32. If you're interested in this issue, see my commentary on "Winds from the East," at Pambazuka (January 2011).

Global Governance 2022 Fellows Program:  While not specifically on China-in-Africa, this interesting program has two groups of fellows focused on China's role in international energy governance, and in international development assistance. A hat tip to Richard Carey.

Chinese Mining Investment in Peru in Comparative Perspective

Amos Irwin (Fletcher School) and Kevin Gallagher (Boston University) have a new working paper exploring Chinese mining investment in Peru. These researchers are painstaking and methodical, and build up their findings with extensive fieldwork, interviews, and careful gleaning of news reports. Their earlier research on Chinese finance in Latin America (published at the Inter-American Dialogue, where Sinologist/Latin Americanist Margaret Myers is leading the China and Latin America program) is a model of careful scholarship, so it's a pleasure to see them venturing into a new area. Here's the abstract of the new study:

Chinese investment in Latin America has exploded in recent years, leading observers to worry that Chinese companies may transplant poor labor and environmental practices to the region. In this Discussion Paper, GDAE’s Amos Irwin and Kevin P. Gallagher evaluate the economic, environmental and social impacts of Chinese mining in Latin America and compare that performance to other major foreign and domestic firms in the same sector. Based on new quantitative inspection data from Peru, the researchers find that the Chinese company Shougang Hierro Peru has not performed significantly worse
than its foreign or domestic counterparts. In fact, a US-based firm has been among the most egregious violators of Peruvian and global standards as of late.

Chinese investment in the region is so recent that only one mining company has been operating long enough to assess its impact. Shougang Hierro Peru has been widely denounced for its environmental and social record, which has been decried in the literature as far worse than that of comparable foreign-owned companies. Much of this literature blames a “culture clash,” concluding that Chinese companies operate irresponsibly in Latin America because they are predisposed to poor labor and environmental standards.

Using new government data and historical archives, Irwin and Gallagher find that while Shougang performed poorly on many indicators, when compared to other foreign and domestic mining companies its poor performance has not stood out in recent years. Rather, the Peruvian government has continually failed to force mining companies to comply with their investment commitments, respect government and global standards, or negotiate with their unions.

They conclude that the Shougang case study does not necessarily determine that future Chinese mining companies will be more likely to bring poor environmental or labor practices to Latin America than other foreign and domestic competitors. High social and environmental costs are endemic to mining in Latin America. Consistent with the broader literature on the subject, this study shows that nation-states like Peru cannot count on foreign or domestic firms to self-regulate. To truly maximize the benefits from
natural resource extraction, and to mitigate the risks, nations need to stiffly regulate, monitor and discipline firms operating in the sector—regardless of the firm's origin.

I'm not sure that we have a comparable (published) comparative study of mining investment in Africa, although the Human Rights Watch study in Zambia that I've blogged on came close.  I hope this study will help stimulate researchers working on similar China-Africa issues.

Is China Really Building 100 Dams in Africa?

I've just seen a short article on the website of the Oxford University China-Africa Network stating that Beijing is involved in "more than 100 dams" in Africa.

Really?

Here's what the author, Dr. Harry Verhoeven, says: 

"Beijing especially is using its formidable technical expertise in hydro-infrastructure and immense foreign reserves to resurrect dam-building overseas: in half of all African countries, from the Sudanese desert and the Ethiopian lowlands to the rivers of Algeria and Gabon, Chinese engineers are involved in the planning, heightening and building of more than 100 dams. The tens of billions of US dollars and thousands of megawatts involved in these projects have so far remained off the radar in the China-Africa debate, but are possibly more consequential for the future of the African continent than the exports of oil, copper and other valuable resources."(emphasis added)

Verhoeven cites a 2009 publication as his source for this statement: Michael Kugelman (ed.), Land Grab? The Race for the World's Farmland. Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, 2009. Verhoeven doesn't provide a page number, but I searched through this online publication for "dams" and "100" and found nothing relevant to this claim. Sources aside, this claim is problematic for several reasons.

It's true that there has been a resurgence of interest in building hydropower dams in Africa, and that Chinese banks and construction companies are part of this. (This interest has not been "off the radar" however. I wrote about it in The Dragon's Gift. Peter Bosshard at International Rivers has been following this trend and wrote about it for Pambazuka.)

International Rivers recently produced the 2nd edition of a report on Chinese interest in dam building. It is probably their database of media reports that is the ultimate source for this statement. Yet International Rivers has also been prone to exaggeration on this issue. I found this with the spin that accompanied their earlier report on Chinese "dam building".

In 2010, International Rivers released a list of (only) 25 dam projects that were said to have Chinese involvement, in Africa, as of 2008 (map to right).  Although the map and list implied that these were current and active cases, this is what I found (and blogged here on January 28, 2011), on looking into each case: 

1. Four were Chinese foreign aid projects, usually quite small, completed between 1982 and 1996.
2. Three involved repairs or expansions of hydropower plants (i.e. new turbines, etc.), not dams. 
3. Ten appear at the present moment to have been MOUs or expressions of interest that went nowhere. 
4. Three seemed to have construction contracts signed recently & appeared to have financing lined up, but hadn't started construction & so could still fall apart (Ethiopia-Neshi; Togo-Adjarala] 
5. As of January 2011 only 6 of the listed projects were dams currently under construction or completed recently (Ethiopia-Tekeze; Ghana-Bui; Congo-Imboulou; Sudan-Merowe; Botswana-Dikgatlhong; Gabon-Grand Poubara).

It does no service to our understanding of this important issue to create yet another stylized picture that appears to be way out of proportion to the reality. 

If you write about Chinese involvement in building dams in Africa, why not spend a little time and effort to dig into these cases and come up with numbers that you can stand behind?  Remember what Steven Mufson and John Pomfret, former Washington Post Beijing bureau chief, wrote on February 28, 2010: “inflating the challenge from China could be just as dangerous as underestimating it.” I got that quotation from International Rivers, by the way, and send them a tip of the hat.

Note: This blog posting was slightly revised on January 8, 2012. I removed some snarky language that unfairly generalized about advocacy NGOs. I am impressed by the new work being done at International Rivers and their efforts to push for accuracy.  Anyone reading this blog should also see the comments section for a robust response and explanation from the author, Dr. Harry Verhoeven, who stepped up to the plate to provide more information about his research, and from Peter Bosshard at International Rivers.

Whatever Happened to These Chinese Agricultural Investments?

I'm at the 2012 African Studies Association Annual Meetings in Philadelphia, where I'm going to present a work-in-progress on Chinese "land grabs" (or not) in Africa, on Saturday. Leaving aside the importance of the issue for African smallholders and subsistence farmers, it's a fascinating project for a researcher. It's also very hard to get good, up-to-date information. This summer I hope to do additional fieldwork on this issue. But summer is a long time away. I thought it might be helpful to see if any readers are already "in the field" or recently returned, and if the blog could post updates from the field. Feel free to email me with information. Here are a few of the projects and puzzles that are still unsolved.

(1) Malibya investment in Mali. This project hit the headlines in 2008 or so, when it was revealed that the government of Mali had offered 100,000 ha in the Office du Niger to a subsidiary of the Libyan sovereign wealth fund, Libyan African Investment Portfolio. Here's a link to the "Convention" signed between Mali and Libya. Subsequently, the project, Malibya, contracted with a Chinese construction company, China, China Geo-engineering Construction Company Group (CGCOC).  CGCOC mainly does construction, but it does some construction under a BOO or BOT model (CGCOC calls this "investment and operation"; others would say "Build, Own, Operate" or "Build, Operate, Transfer").

There is no hint I could see that CGCOC is an investor in the Malibya project. But another Chinese company, the agribusiness firm Yuan Longping High Tech (HLHT), was also involved in the project. Most reports said that YLHT was supplying expertise and seeds. Yet a Chinese language report, on another of China Geo-engineering's websites, said that YLHT had set up a joint venture with 30% ownership:

  2008年6月，中地几—马经理部正式与国家杂交水稻中心主任袁隆平院士签订了合作协议，由中地集团公司和中心联合组成中方，与马里比亚农业公司在马里共同成立“马里利中杂交水稻研发与生产合资股份公司”。同年11月，合资公司正式注册成立。按公司章程规定，公司的全部资金由利方筹集，利方占70%的股份，中方负责技术和协调，占30%股份。

So far, I haven't found anything else. The project is clearly underway. But who are the investors, Libyans? Chinese and Libyans? If Chinese, which firm(s)? Does Mali have any equity, given their huge contribution of land? If you have information on this project, please share it.

[updates to come]

China and Mauritania: Whatever Happened to the Railway?

In 2007 and 2008, many of us read in the Western and Chinese media that a Chinese-Sudanese joint venture was going to build a railway to Mauritania's phosphate deposits in the border town of Kaedi, and that China Eximbank had agreed to finance 70 percent of the $686 million project.

This project was listed in the World Bank's 2008 study of Chinese infrastructure projects in Africa, Building Bridges, and has been assumed by many to be ongoing.

I was more skeptical about this project, as there was no further word about it after 2008. I didn't include it in my 2010 book, The Dragon's Gift. But I always wondered what had happened.

Now we know, and the answer is: nothing.

In an April 2012 article, "Phosphate of Bofal: Dream or Reality?", a Mauritanian journalist, Ahmed Yahya Kowri, solves the puzzle. He writes that he'd been hearing about the potential of this "famous" project since he was a schoolboy in the 1970s. The idea that the Chinese would finance a railway was a more recent part of the dream.

Now, Kowri writes, an Indian company is actually mining the phosphate. While Kowri applauds the realization of the long-promised mining venture, he also writes that there are problems: the Indians are bringing in a lot of Indian workers and managers, they are not respecting the environment or the communities, or "law in general," and they are putting a lot of pressure on the government to get exemptions and special facilities. People are made to work 12 to 14 hours a day, and the labor inspector is nowhere to be seen.

What's interesting about this, to China-Africa watchers? A few things.

(1) First, it shows how important it is to be skeptical that an agreement is actually a project. Always follow up on any signed agreement. They come with many different levels of concreteness, varying from a simple MOU (which merely means, "let's continue talking about it"), to "Protocols" to "Contracts" and "Conventions". I am always skeptical until I see work actually beginning (and even then it can still all fall apart, as we have seen many, many times).

(2) Second, we often hear that the Chinese are the "worst" investors in Africa, with regard to the environment, social relations, labor practices. Perhaps a more useful way to see it is that emerging market investors are not going to have the corporate social responsibility ethos or knowledge of those from wealthier industrialized countries. As the complaints concerning the Indian investor suggests, this probably has nothing to do with being a democracy or not, and all to do with being a developing country, with developing country standards. 



Photo: A Mauritanian herds camels near the ancient desert town of Chinguetti, 500km (300 miles) north-east of the capital Nouakchott. Photograph: Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters.

A Chinese Farm in Africa

One of the most popular guest posts I've hosted here on the blog was Lila Buckley's "Eating Bitter to Taste Sweetness". Now Lila has written a short update of her continued research on Chinese agricultural engagement, on the website of her employer, the International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED). As can be expected, it's good.

In A Chinese Farm in Africa, Lila reports on her follow up meetings in China, with "Chen", one of the Chinese posted to Senegal in her original research visit, in 2010. Chen

 ... and 14 other Chinese agronomists had spent two years on two separate sites as part of an ongoing collaboration between the Chinese and Senegalese government to promote development of Senegal’s agriculture sector.
But the programme was wrought with difficulties—communication barriers, lack of trust on both sides, project design flaws— that left both the Chinese and their Senegalese collaborators frustrated much of the time. It was a difficult two years for Chen—his first time outside of China, working in an unwelcoming environment, far from his family.

Fluent in Chinese and French, interested in participant observation anthropological methodologies, Lila was an ideal researcher to shed light on the lived experience of Chinese aid workers in Africa. This new posting continues in the careful, well-researched and well-written mode established by Lila's guest post and master's thesis. Back in China, Chen says:

"Here in Hubei farmers appreciate our help, but in reality we can’t have a big impact. In Senegal, a small change in watering technique or soil management can increase yields dramatically, so I can reach more people and work more effectively. It wouldn’t take very much to develop a strong African agricultural sector.” ...

 I especially like one of Lila's final comments, which is confirmed by my own experience.

This is the logic of China’s increasing support of Africa’s agriculture:  introduce Chinese farming techniques to Africa, not to feed China per se, but to increase global food supply in general.

Photo: Chen showing Lila Buckley his innovative method for growing potatoes in straw nests. Credit: Simon Lim

China, the UK, and Africa: Tripartite Cooperation?

Every few months, I have another meeting with a donor agency or an NGO that is interested in developing joint activities with China, in Africa.

It's not easy, I tell them. The World Bank has had an MOU with China Eximbank since 2007 and has still to develop a single joint project. The UK has been trying since perhaps 2006 to do something with a Chinese partner in Africa.

Now, it seems the British may have finally gotten close to the promised land of tripartite cooperation. Jin Zhu at China Daily reported from the second Africa-Britain-China Conference on Agriculture and Fisheries in Beijing on Monday, November 12, that the UK is going to put up the money ($15.9 million) while the Chinese will contribute experts. "[t]he program will facilitate the transfer of agricultural technology to low-income countries in Africa and Asia. Pilot projects will be first established in Malawi and Uganda."

I'll be following this to track what transpires. Several key people in DFID have worked hard and patiently, for years, to make this happen. We'll see whether it results in anything very useful.

hat tip to China Africa News
photo: Ploughing a field in Shangdong province, eastern China. Photograph: Wu Hong/EPA
 

Guest Post: A Blind Date in Namibia

Most of this blog is about the political and economic side of China in Africa. But in many ways, it's the cultural side that fascinates people. Below, a guest blog post from Irene Sun on her "blind date" experience in Namibia:

In 2008, I was a teacher in a public secondary school in rural Namibia. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Namibia is twice the size of California, but it only has two million people (by contrast, New York City alone has 8 million people). Namibia is sparsely populated, and it took some effort to secure the essentials of life when the nearest grocery store and bank was an hour away by car.

Given these circumstances, I cultivated sources for any foods that weren’t maize or mahangu (the local grain staple). I brought food back when I had reason to go to Windhoek, the capital, and I befriended a couple with a garden in my town. But there was one peculiar network I took particular pleasure in discovering: the Chinese food network. All over Namibia, Chinese entrepreneurs had opened shops selling cheap goods imported from China. I had gone into one of these so-called ‘China shops’ in my area out of curiosity, and after some initial surprise at meeting a Chinese woman from America, the manager of the shop offered to have his workers who regularly deliver goods from Windhoek bring along some Chinese groceries for me as well. I was Chinese food-starved, so this was an amazing lifeline: fresh Chinese vegetables trucked from the capital, 12 hours away by car!

Over the next few months, I picked up my share of groceries every other week. During one visit, the China shop owner told me that he was going to have a celebration in honor of a friend visiting from Windhoek and asked if I wanted to join. Having little else to do on the weekends, I agreed.

On the day of the celebration, I showed up at the appointed China shop to find my shop owner there with his friend. The three of us drank local beer and expensive, rare tea that the friend had brought back from China. Afterwards, we headed to another China shop, where lower-level Chinese workers were busy preparing a feast. They had cleared out one room of the shop and installed two large round folding tables. In the back, young Chinese men labored over chopping boards and woks and sent out a steady stream of dishes that eventually covered the table. It was hands-down the best meal I had in my year in Namibia, and certainly the most impressive. There was every type of meat: beef, goat, chicken, fish, pork, and duck, the latter two of which Namibians don’t commonly eat. There were fresh Chinese vegetables trucked in from Windhoek 12 hours away and baijiu liquor from China. And to this day, I still have no idea how they procured the fresh prawns, as we were in a landlocked part of the country that was a 16-hour drive from the ocean.

Over the course of this feast, it dawned on me that this was essentially a blind date. The night had been prepared for the shop owner to set me up with his friend. He had been careful to seat us next to each other at the round table, and most of the baijiu toasts were crafted to show off his friend’s accomplishments. To be fair, his story was impressive. He had arrived in Namibia at age 17 after having dropped out of high school in China. At that point, he was only barely literate in Chinese and knew no English, Oshiwambo, or Afrikaans at all. His only friend who came with him to Namibia lasted 2 days and then headed back to China. From these humble beginnings, he worked his way up the China shop chain and after a few years, owned several dozen China shops himself. He then sold them and started a security firm providing armed guards to various businesses all over Namibia. This had grown to a firm employing 500 people, and now, wealthy and in his late 20s, he was ready to find a wife. But there were few Chinese women in Namibia, and hence his China shopkeeper friend had thought of me.

I was not interested in a husband, so I attempted to resist their offers for me to stay in town that night. After dinner, I insisted on going back to my small town an hour away, and they insisted that they escort me back. Chinese people are difficult to refuse when they truly insist on something, and these Chinese in Namibia were no exception. So I found myself in the passenger seat of the Chinese wife-seeker’s car, a black BMW. I learned during the ride that this was in fact his fourth black BMW. He had purchased the first one before he knew how to drive. Unsurprisingly, he promptly wrecked it. (In the fight between the BMW and the cow, both lost.) The next two BMWs had followed a similar fate before he mastered the art of driving – a fact that I wished I knew before I had stepped into BMW #4.

They dropped me off at my house, and after that, despite some searching inquiries, I didn’t go on a second date. The whole experience did leave a lingering impression on me though, of the toughness, the grit, and the sheer ingenuity of Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa. In a strange land, they were living large.

So ladies, if you’re Chinese and looking for a husband and an adventure, Namibia just might be a good place to look!