When it comes to the textile industry in Southern Africa, BBC's Justin Rowlatt got it wrong — the Chinese aren't coming, they are here. And it's both exciting and scary.
Over the past few decades, the Chinese have invested millions of dollars building garment factories across the continent. The investment is strategically brilliant. In a recent CNN interview, Joseph Stiglitz, former president of the World Bank, shared this optimism for African manufacturing — "Wages are rising in Asia and people are asking, 'Where can we start producing in a competitive way?'". The investment seems to follow preferential export schemes and lucrative investment deals with Chinese/Taiwanese governments and the host countries. An official in the Swaziland Ministry of Labour said -10 shell factories had been built by the Swazi government for the Taiwanese before the pens from AGOA (a US preferential treatment scheme) signatories had been lifted.
What does this mean for workers?
As witnessed in waves across Asia and the Indian sub-continent, the textile industry can be an incredibly powerful catalyst for lifting people out of poverty. Thousands of jobs have already been created, providing income to people with few, if any, other work opportunities. In Lesotho, textile factories are the largest employer, providing jobs to over 40,000 workers. These moves into Africa are more than just another geographic shift in the manufacturing chain. Both the size of the investments and the trend for Chinese manufacturers to take the long view suggest that this is a long-term commitment. Just last month, the China African Development Fund inaugurated a new $27 million leather factory in Ethiopia. An African textile industry is a source of sustainable employment in a region where it is desperately needed. The potential is enormous.
In Swaziland, the textile industry — supported in this case by Taiwan rather than mainland China — is a significant employer, providing jobs for about 15,000 people: a serious figure for a country with an estimated workforce of only 300,000 and whose unemployment has been reported in the range of 40-60%.
Thousands of jobs, under what conditions?
Despite the potential, not everyone is welcoming these developments with open arms. Headlines from local newspapers suggest why:
- "More than 300 factories which pay lower than the required minimum wage - a third of them Chinese-owned - face closure, with the potential loss of 20 000 jobs. Mail & Guardian (South Africa), March 7, 2011
- "Textile workers share toilets with dogs." Swazi Times, October 1, 2010
- "Somebody Save Us from these Asians — textile worker." Swazi Times, October 9, 2010
When setting up shop in Africa, it seems Chinese manufacturers are replicating what they know from home: machinery, quality standards, management teams, supervisors, language, health & safety standards, audit ‘expertise' and work ethic. And this seems to be the heart of the problem. Can a Chinese supervisor, accustomed to working in a Chinese factory effectively manage, communicate with, incentivise, train, understand, instruct, discipline or motivate a worker whose culture they don't understand, and with no common language between them?
Findings I have come across in factory audits suggest that they cannot:
- Workers fired following three written warnings they did not know they had been given; supervisors argue they had verbally communicated the issue to the worker
- Unreasonable production targets calculated using productivity measures and production commitments as per operations in China, not modified for local workforces (e.g. HIV/AIDS-related absenteeism and turnover is a critical example of variances in local conditions)
- Verbal harassment and physical altercations between workers and supervisors over issues such as annual leave entitlements, meeting targets, and wages owed. One worker stated that "the better the English, the nicer the supervisor."
There is a lot else reminiscent of factories in China:
- Issues over working hours (excessive overtime, payment of overtime premiums, recording overtime hours)
- Inadequate Health & Safety (signage and procedures in English and Chinese only, not local languages, PPE distributed for audits only, lack of and/or ineffective H&S training, improper storage and handling of chemicals)
- Harsh treatment (illegal fines and disciplinary practices, verbal and physical harassment)
- Corruption and bribery (of local officials to hide/pass H&S requirements, ‘resolve' worker complaints).
So what now?
The root cause of these issues is clear: culture and language barriers. The solutions in themselves are simple. The harder challenge is to resist, at an industry level across the continent, the wholesale importation of the worst of Chinese labour practices.
Time and resources need to be invested building capacity and awareness with the factories. A few simple suggestions for what needs to be done include integrating Chinese managers and supervisors into the local culture, ensuring a common language (probably English), providing supervisors with culturally appropriate management training, identifying with worker input their needs and the benefits that will motivate them, and collaborating with local NGOs to provide workers with access to free NGO services (like HIV/AIDS testing and support).
Reforming practices overall is more challenging. The good news is that, over the past two decades, the ethical trading community has learned how to create material improvements in worker conditions even in the toughest countries. We cannot afford to sit back and wait for an exposé rather than being proactive. Almost as bad would be to let audits alone define the landscape of effort and the allocation of ethical trading resources in Africa.
It is only a matter of time before buyers feel a real shift in production from Asia to Africa. If the best solutions are to be created, buyers have to act now to understand the issues and root causes in Africa, look for the right way to adapt the best global successes to local conditions, and make the promise of moving ‘beyond audits' a practical reality.
Over the coming decade, Africa will be the most exciting continent to watch for the growth of production, jobs and new sectors. With luck, work will be created for millions of people. With effort, this work can come with decent conditions. Intelligent action now to set the ethical trading agenda will make all the difference.