[...]

[T]he incident also raises some questions. First, would this sentence have been handed down without video evidence, and especially if that video evidence didn’t go viral? Alternatively, would it have happened in any other country than Rwanda, with its specific combination of authoritarian central planning and nationalist developmentalism?

After all, when we first reported on the scandal, it was in the context of several other viral videos of Chinese labor abuse coming from countries like the DRC. Those cases have subsequently disappeared under the Twitter waves, with no multi-decade jail sentence in sight.

It is intriguing that the African country now seen as pushing back against Chinese overreach is in some ways the most similar to China (although Rwanda has also been described as modelling its development path on Singapore.)

That said, one has to acknowledge that the sentence is a landmark moment in Africa-China relations, and one that will hopefully cast a chill over all foreign employers on the continent.

However, the bigger question is whether African governance will be able to step up and follow through once the next abuse video goes viral…