"Why have thousands of Chinese workers left Africa over the past decade?" 11 March 2024

Around two decades ago, former Chinese president Jiang Zemin’s push for businesses to “go out” saw thousands of mainland companies head to Africa in search of new markets and raw materials. With them, went thousands of Chinese migrant workers and by 2015 they numbered around 263,000 in Africa.

But since that peak, the number of Chinese workers in Africa has plummeted as funding for infrastructure projects has dried up...By the end of 2021, the official number of Chinese workers in Africa was about 93,000, a fall of 64 per cent from 2015, according to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) working paper about China’s economic engagements with Africa published in February...

The decline in workers is inextricably linked to the gross annual revenues of Chinese companies’ construction projects in Africa...The pandemic was responsible for a large part of the decline.

...in Angola, the decline was directly linked to two factors: the economic crisis following the post-2014 oil price plunge and the drying up of Chinese loans...However, Egypt is bucking the trend, recording increases in Chinese workers in recent years, albeit small ones...It is a similar story in the DRC. Chinese investors and workers have continued to follow the fortunes of the country’s mining industry...

China Africa Research Initiative (CARI)’s Brautigam said the presence of Chinese workers was closely correlated with available project finance...She said some of the decline was also because Chinese companies increasingly hired local workers the longer they were present in a country...