CHINA: CHINA: THE AFRICAN DREAM

Africa’s resource-rich nations have a new best friend: China. Its diplomats and business people are making friends and cutting deals across Africa. In 2006, trade between Africa and China was worth $55 billion. Chinese traders are showing up in Kenya and Chad, looking for a piece of the action. Western nations are wringing their hands over China’s rising influence over a continent that they once plundered as its colonizers.

Far less noticed until now is the increasing flow of Africans to China, pursuing their own version of the Chinese motto: “to get rich is glorious”. Guangzhou, the trading hub of a region known as the workshop of the world, has a population of around 10,000 Africans, and their numbers are growing. Over the last five years, they have staked out their own downtown neighborhood. They come to live, work and hustle, sourcing manufactured products to ship back home and finding innovative ways to capitalize on China’s dynamic economy. Their story is the new African Dream, and an alternative to migrating to Europe or America.

Shot on assignment for Monocle Magazine