NAIROBI, (Xinhua) — Sany Heavy Industry, one of China’s largest construction machinery manufacturers, posted 3.5 billion yuan (about 517 million U.S. dollars) in African sales in the first quarter of this year, a year-on-year increase of about 70 percent, according to company figures.
Its chairman, Xiang Wenbo, sees that as a floor rather than a ceiling.
“I think this is only the beginning. There are still huge opportunities ahead,” Xiang said in a recent interview with Xinhua in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Sany’s trajectory tracks a broader shift in China-Africa economic ties, moving beyond the export of goods toward industrial presence on the ground — in infrastructure, clean energy, servicing networks, and workforce training.
TAKING ROOT
Xiang has lost count of how many times he has visited Africa since Sany first entered the continent more than two decades ago. He said he is drawn to the continent’s unspoiled character and the beauty of its natural environment.
What has changed, in his telling, is the built environment. Infrastructure across Africa has been transformed over the past decade, he said, “especially in Kenya, where the change is striking. So I believe Africa is now in a very good period of development.”
The commercial case has moved with it. China has been Africa’s largest trading partner for 15 consecutive years, according to China’s Ministry of Commerce, and the stock of Chinese direct investment on the continent continues to grow. Beyond capital and equipment, Xiang argued, Chinese firms have brought technology transfer and supply-chain depth that turn industrialization plans into productive capacity.
Many of those firms have become significant taxpayers and employers in their host countries, he said.
“We have created a lot of local jobs. We directly employ more than 1,000 people here, and we have sold more than 40,000 machines in Africa over the years. Most of the operators were trained by us, which means we have trained a large number of industrial workers,” Xiang said.
“We have established sales and service operations, including repair centers, in almost every African country. Those skilled service personnel are, in effect, the foundation of Africa’s modern manufacturing industry in the future.”
That picture is broadly consistent with outside assessments. A McKinsey study of Chinese enterprises in Africa found that local staff account for close to 90 percent of their workforce.
“ROADS FIRST”
Drawing on China’s own development experience — captured in the saying that to get rich, you build roads first — Xiang argued that infrastructure must be built with foresight and should never become a bottleneck on growth.
By that standard, he said, Africa’s build-out “is still far from sufficient, and there is a great deal Chinese companies can do.”
He pointed to the cost of moving goods. “Logistics here is still very inadequate, and because of logistics, many things in Africa remain expensive,” he said, noting that a road journey in some major African cities can take more than 14 hours. “That would be unimaginable in China.”
The gap is well documented. The African Development Bank estimates the continent’s annual infrastructure financing shortfall at between 68 billion and 108 billion dollars, and infrastructure deficits are widely identified as a principal constraint on Africa’s competitiveness and on realizing the potential of the African Continental Free Trade Area.
A white paper issued by China’s State Council Information Office, “China and Africa in the New Era: A Partnership of Equals,” says Chinese companies have built or upgraded more than 10,000 km of railways and nearly 100,000 km of roads in Africa and helped create over 4.5 million local jobs.
Africa’s transport and network infrastructure remains nowhere near complete, Xiang concluded, so concerns about over-building are beside the point.
TWO REVOLUTIONS
Looking ahead, Xiang said Chinese companies should shift from exporting products to exporting industry, helping African partners build modern management practices and industrial systems. China and Africa pursuing modernization together, with no country left behind, is “a very large undertaking,” he said.
He sees a particular opening in timing. The fourth industrial revolution, driven by artificial intelligence, is unfolding alongside a clean energy revolution led by wind and solar, he said. The overlap gives latecomer economies a historic chance to leapfrog older technologies.
Sany is pursuing a strategic transition centered on new energy, promoting green mining, microgrids, and utility-scale solar to cut African mining operations’ reliance on costly conventional power. Last year, the company donated 500 household solar systems to Malawi.
Xiang acknowledged that the operating environment is not without friction, citing logistics costs, financing constraints, and the long lead times required to build service networks from scratch.
As Europe and the United States turn to non-market measures to shield domestic industries, he added, third-party markets are becoming the main arena of competition. The long-standing relationship between China and Africa offers a comparatively stable environment for two-way trade and investment, he said, and that is where Chinese firms’ durable advantage lies.
Sany’s African story began in 2002 with two motor graders delivered to Morocco. Nearly a quarter of a century later, its machines work across the continent.
“The real curtain,” Xiang said, “is only now going up.” ■
