Chinese Investment Stimulates Ethiopia Leather And Other Manufacturing Industry Potential

It is reported that H&M, the global apparel retailing giant, has already started working with Ethiopia's suppliers.

In addition, many large international companies such as Pittards, the British leather manufacturer, and Turkey textile manufacturer AykaTekstil are interested in setting up factories in Ethiopia.

Gabriel, a scholar at the University of adidat, told our correspondent that more countries invested in Ethiopia, which highlighted the comparative advantage of Ethiopia in developing manufacturing.

He believes that in Africa, Ethiopia is the second most populous country after Nigeria. The huge labor force is an important reason why international investment attaches importance to Ethiopia.

Moreover, as one of the least developed countries in the world, Ethiopia also enjoys many African products such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act.

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This policy will help the export of Ethiopia.

In addition, Ethiopia's political situation has been stable for many years and its economy has been developing at a high speed. The Ethiopian government has implemented the policy of opening to the outside world for many years, and has implemented the reform of economic marketization and privatization. It has attracted a large number of foreign investment through increasing investment preferential policies, lowering investment threshold, expanding investment fields, and implementing preferential tax reduction and exemption.

However, Peter Dmeger, a senior researcher at the Institute of International Studies in South Africa, told our reporter that in developing the manufacturing sector, African countries had cheap labor, but they lacked equipment, capital and experience, and infrastructure facilities such as roads and power supply that were matched with the manufacturing industry.

Lu Fang, a Shanghai man who runs a garment factory in Lesotho, a southern African country, told reporters that although the cost of human labor in Africa is relatively low, the local staff's mastery of technology is low or incomplete, resulting in low production efficiency, which will also increase production costs.

For Ethiopia, Xu Jianliang told reporters that the lack of supporting facilities for the development of the manufacturing industry is also very obvious constraints.

In addition to the power supply instability of Ethiopia will affect production, chemical materials almost all need to be imported into the leather products of Ethiopia. Because Ethiopia is a landlocked country, materials entering Djibouti port from Ethiopia are required for customs clearance and land pportation.

In addition, Ethiopia still has strict foreign exchange control, and the entire financial sector has not been opened to foreign investment, which is a relatively thorny problem for capital repatriation.

Fortunately, at present, Chinese enterprises are also actively contributing to the infrastructure such as Ethiopia, roads and electric power.

One of the most critical projects is from Addisababa to the main railway line of the nearest port state Djibouti. At present, the two railway bureau of China Railway has started construction. This railway will be the main channel for import and export of Ethiopia and even East Africa's hinterland, which will greatly enhance the efficiency of export of Ethiopia manufacturing products.

In 2014, the first expressway from Addisababa to Adama, which was built by the China Communications Group, was also opened to traffic.

In terms of electricity, the largest wind power project in East Africa built by China Hydropower Consulting Group has been put into operation in batches.

In addition, more Chinese funded enterprises are actively participating in or bidding for the Ethiopia power grid renovation project.