The Hardscrabble Business of Chinese Manufacturing in Africa

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2017

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Irene Yuan Sun, a consultant at McKinsey, explains why so many Chinese entrepreneurs are setting up factories in Africa. She describes what it’s like inside these factories, who works there, what they’re making—and how this emerging manufacturing sector is industrializing countries including Lesotho and Nigeria. Sun’s new book is “The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you navigate gender in your workplace?
0:04.0	HBR's fan favorite podcast Women at Work is back with personal stories, the newest research,
0:09.2	and practical advice on navigating disability, career failures, and joining a board.
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0:15.0	Women at Work, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBO Idea Cast from Harvard Business Review.
0:30.0	I'm Sarah Green Carmichael.
0:32.0	Right after Irene Yuon Sun I'm Sarah Greenker-Michael.
0:33.2	Right after Irene Yuan Sun graduated from college, she went to Namibia in southwestern
0:38.0	Africa to teach English at a rural public school.
0:41.6	She didn't expect it to be such a lonely challenging year.
0:44.8	I didn't really see myself making a difference in the future of African people that I was
0:51.7	supposedly trying to help.
0:53.0	She also missed her mother's Chinese cooking.
0:55.0	So to make something that tasted like home,
0:58.0	she went into town to buy vegetables imported from China.
1:01.0	The shop owner ended up inviting her to have dinner with him and a group
1:04.8	of Chinese factory bosses and after several drinks the men were spitting at the
1:09.5	table and pulling out their guns. They also forever changed the way she thought about development.
1:15.2	You have people who are extremely practical,
1:17.6	extremely rough unpolished people,
1:21.2	but they're creating businesses that create real jobs.
1:24.0	Sun asked herself, who are these people?
	...

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