A Case Study of Chinese Multinational Corporations in Ethiopia in the Era of Belt and Road Initiative: Competing Discourses, Local Practices, and Development Implications

The influx of mature Chinese Multinational Corporations (MNCs) to Africa has increased since 2013, following the launch of the historic Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the world's largest development program ever undertaken by a single country. However, the contribution of Chinese MNCs to local development in host countries has been contested due to competing discourses, theories, and research findings. The contestation is fuelled by China's BRI-built development infrastructure in Africa, which has boosted China-Africa relations while weakening the US-Africa relation. Marxist critics consider Chinese MNCs in Africa as neo-colonial extensions of "resource extraction," while modernization and neoliberal advocates see them as "agents of transformation." These "transformative-extractive" narratives either glorify or vilify Chinese MNCs while neglecting the role of other crucial local and global actors like companies from other countries and the states of host African countries. The goal of this research is, therefore, to go beyond polarized discourses through analysing the developmental impact of Chinese MNCs in the Ethiopian Hawassa Industrial Park (HIP) in the context of diverse actors competing over meanings, resources, and institutional legitimacy. An ethnographic fieldwork was conducted over ten months, involving interviews, and discussions and field observation. A total of 70 people participated in the study. Field data shows that Chinese MNCs in HIP are driven by corporate welfare from local and extra local settings, not resource extraction. Chinese MNCs build infrastructure, create jobs and generate foreign currency, but their long-term development implications are limited due to enclave nature of HIP and other issues embedded in the Ethiopian industrialization model.