DTA

Dottorato

LAURIA, VALERIA

etd-03152020-200901

BELTWAYS OF AGENCY: DRIVERS, MODALITIES AND OUTCOMES OF CHINESE ENGAGEMENT IN ETHIOPIAN INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS

Istituto di Diritto, Politica e Sviluppo

Istituto di Diritto, Politica e Sviluppo - PHD IN HUMAN RIGHTS AND GLOBAL POLITICS: LEGAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND ECONOMIC CHALLENGES

Membro Prof. COLLIGNON, STEFAN
Membro Dott.ssa GIUSTI, SERENA
Membro Prof. STRAZZARI, FRANCESCO
Membro Prof. FISCHER, ANDREW

• Nessuna parola chiave trovata

16/12/2020;

parziale

Abstract<br>China’s increasing presence in Africa has raised concerns among scholars, policy makers, and<br>practitioners about the potentially exploitative outcome of this encounter. The core idea behind this<br>concern is that of a one-way domination of a passive and submissive Africa by a monolithic China.<br>This doctoral research aims to contribute to the body of literature on China-Africa relations by<br>studying China’s presence in the Ethiopian infrastructure sector as an ideal case to examine this<br>polemic, given both the importance of infrastructure investment in Ethiopia’s development strategy<br>and the dominance of Chinese involvement within such investment, with Ethiopia receiving the<br>second-largest amount of Chinese infrastructure financing in Africa. It is against this background that<br>this dissertation investigates Chinese-financed, Chinese-built infrastructure in Ethiopia. To do so, the<br>thesis advances a new interpretative concept, the Global Infrastructure Network (GIN) framework.<br>This concept maps infrastructure projects with negotiations between different actors at the global,<br>national, and local levels. It helps to grasp how these levels are interconnected with one another and,<br>therefore, to identify otherwise-hidden socioeconomic and political factors shaping the expressions<br>of agency of different actors involved at different stages of the design, financing, and implementation<br>of infrastructure projects. The framework also helps to assess how infrastructure projects are<br>integrated into global, national, and local economies and to scrutinise their potential to generate<br>positive development synergies and drive favourable economic outcomes. The result is a portrait of<br>actors, power relations, incentives, and interests at play in China-Ethiopia relations in the<br>infrastructure sector.<br>The research sheds light on how, despite the diversity and fluidity of Chinese companies’ behaviour<br>and their multifaceted effects, their presence in the Ethiopian infrastructure sector exhibits positive<br>development synergies through creating employment opportunities, accelerating technology transfer,<br>and diversifying the production structure. It also questions the assumption of African passivity in the<br>Ethiopian case. When one reads infrastructure projects as the result of negotiations occurring at<br>several levels and different moments in time, my fieldwork evidence suggests that Ethiopian actors<br>have been able to pursue their interests before, during, and after the implementation of infrastructure<br>projects, albeit with differences in the immediate effectiveness of their actions.<br>Valeria Lauria<br>This research therefore contributes to the debate on China-Africa relations at four levels. First, it<br>advances a new conceptual tool, the GIN, that helps to interpret foreign-financed, foreign-built<br>infrastructure projects with a map of actors, negotiations, modalities, and outcomes. Second, it sheds<br>light on the increasing dominance of Chinese firms in the Ethiopian infrastructure sector by exploring<br>the drivers of Chinese firms’ engagement in the sector. Specifically, it shows how political and<br>commercial interests are strongly interlinked. On the one hand, Chinese banks and state actors play<br>an important role in crafting normative and financial conditions to support the expansion of Chinese<br>firms in Africa. On the other hand, Chinese firms are increasingly operating beyond the Chinese<br>government’s control and tend to follow self-interested commercial objectives. Third, the study offers<br>a comprehensive account of how Ethiopian state and nonstate actors pursue their interests inside and<br>outside state-led negotiations with their Chinese counterparts and shape the engagement outcome.<br>Fourth, it presents new evidence to challenge the idea of Chinese infrastructure projects as secured<br>enclaves. In the case of the Ethiopian infrastructure sector, several Chinese companies show an<br>increasing integration with the local economy. The study suggests that the local industry makeup,<br>marked by lack of regulations and weak local capabilities, and the characteristics of Chinese firms<br>can condition the formation of development linkages.

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