Neoliberal Scheme or Opportunity for Sustainable Development? – The case of Chinese agricultural investments in Zambia
Hangwei Li
University of Kyoto
One of the most recent additions to the long list of neoliberal ideas to foster development in Sub-Saharan Africa is the World Bank’s promotion of foreign direct investment (FDI) in African agriculture. While the World Bank sees Africa’s agricultural sector as “sleeping giant” (2009) with huge potential for development, critics of neoliberal policies argue that they only benefit local and foreign elites by giving them the opportunity to extract additional rents and maximise profit at the expense of the local population. Among the publically most criticised investors in African agriculture are Chinese enterprises, which allegedly discard any corporate responsibility matters on their quest to profit maximisation. However, research results which support or refuse these claims remain sparse and focused on a more structural level and economic figures. This paper goes beyond the structural level by providing the findings of two in-depths case studies at Chinese owned farms in Zambia. The focus is the investigation of the developmental impact on the micro (individual) and meso (institutional) level and their contextualisation within the academic discussions about the sustainability of agricultural FDI as policy tool on one hand and about the impact of specifically Chinese investment on the other hand. The paper concludes that there is indeed rich potential for developmental benefits beyond the structural economic level which manifests in terms of skills transfer and capacity building among local actors.
Key words: Chinese farms, agriculture, Zambia, skills transfer, capacity buiding
