I like this book. Written by 3 french journalists namely Serge Michel, Michel Beuret and Paolo Woods and being translated by a taiwanese.
You will read about the anxiety of a old colonial master losing its "backyard garden" to Chinese country by country, then sector by sector, then road by road.
Africa has always been seen as a Black Continent. French the old master found the yearly 2% contribution to national trade not worth her effort to keep it. US and EU gave them some aids and want them to practice democracy and transparency without first setting up key country's infrastructure. Africa is hopeless and not investable until Chinese come.
Equally I believe Chinese found their wild wild west in Africa. A huge continent which can provide (1) space for her to move some of her population there, (2) a warehouse for their much needed energy, mines, forest and farmland (3) an important consumer market for the sustainability and diversity of her export driven economy and (4) a quarter of UN votes.
However, the most important aspiration for me from this book is ...... we should do our NPV from the viewpoints of our competitors. The IRR and NPV of the westerner must show huge negative that caused them to abandon Africa. However, Chinese deploys a higher strategic objectives, a significant lower cost advantages, a longer investment horizon and an even lower risk premium (as it is computed from Chinese volatile history instead of our usual way of computing from the US market beta) return a profitable NPV.... so they invested there and captured huge market shares.
The other aspiration is the Chinese can start from C without getting A and B in place. When I did my business studies , my lecturers taught me resources, then to be resourceful be competitive advantages but never taught me "resourceless" as a driving force to success. Even my most admired Toyota production system also invented from a need to make more car models on a limited car manufacturing platform.
You will read about the anxiety of a old colonial master losing its "backyard garden" to Chinese country by country, then sector by sector, then road by road.
Africa has always been seen as a Black Continent. French the old master found the yearly 2% contribution to national trade not worth her effort to keep it. US and EU gave them some aids and want them to practice democracy and transparency without first setting up key country's infrastructure. Africa is hopeless and not investable until Chinese come.
Equally I believe Chinese found their wild wild west in Africa. A huge continent which can provide (1) space for her to move some of her population there, (2) a warehouse for their much needed energy, mines, forest and farmland (3) an important consumer market for the sustainability and diversity of her export driven economy and (4) a quarter of UN votes.
However, the most important aspiration for me from this book is ...... we should do our NPV from the viewpoints of our competitors. The IRR and NPV of the westerner must show huge negative that caused them to abandon Africa. However, Chinese deploys a higher strategic objectives, a significant lower cost advantages, a longer investment horizon and an even lower risk premium (as it is computed from Chinese volatile history instead of our usual way of computing from the US market beta) return a profitable NPV.... so they invested there and captured huge market shares.
The other aspiration is the Chinese can start from C without getting A and B in place. When I did my business studies , my lecturers taught me resources, then to be resourceful be competitive advantages but never taught me "resourceless" as a driving force to success. Even my most admired Toyota production system also invented from a need to make more car models on a limited car manufacturing platform.
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