Building roads, building a country

A Chinese company has built its first Chinese-designed expressway in Ethiopia, helping modernize the country

To generate wealth, road construction must come first.

This sentence and variations on it could be found all around China, painted on crude plasterboard signs and walls as part of the country's development and poverty-reduction campaigns.

It turned out to be true, and the imperative has been taken up by Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. He has been pushing his country toward an economic takeoff by pushing construction of roads, railways and other industry-nourishing infrastructure.

China Communications Construction Company, a road engineering company, is among a dozen Chinese companies helping turn Desalegn's dream into reality. Since 1998, it has built more than 2,000 kilometers of road, including the ring road around Addis Ababa, the first such road in Africa, as well as the country's first expressway connecting the capital and the second biggest city, Adama.

Though the highway was still not open, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Desalegn attended a ceremony marking the completion of the 76 km route, built to Chinese standards, when Li visited Ethiopia in May.

"We were thrilled when Prime Minister Desalegn called on us to work as a partner, instead of a contractor," says Zhou Yongsheng, representative of China Communications Construction Company in East Africa.

Zhou's boss and managers of three other Chinese engineering companies were invited by Desalegn to attend a dinner during Li's visit and the prime minister introduced the guests one by one.

Zhou, who first worked in Ethiopia from 1998 to 2002 and returned in 2007, says it has not been easy to gain acceptance of the benefits of China's development experience and the strategic role of Chinese companies.

"The trust and recognition has resulted from our knowledge transfers and unselfish contributions, and even sacrifice over a long time," he says, as he notes the many roads his company has built in Addis Ababa.

He keenly recalls working to upgrade a section of road linking two northern towns that is still known as the China Road. It was cut through the mountains by Chinese workers in the 1970s.

Some of them lost their lives in the harsh conditions, and Zhou says he remembers that among the dead was a chief engineer who fell off a cliff while saving an Ethiopian girl herding sheep.

"We have arranged to visit their graves frequently and also remember to ask our friends to visit if they pass by in the high mountains."Even after completion of the Adama expressway, Zhou says his company has projects in Ethiopia worth at least $1 billion in the works. Very soon, the company will start a 240-km railway project as well.

When he first arrived in Addis Ababa, the city seemed really "remote and bleak", he says. There were no more than 200 Chinese there, including the 150 workers his company had sent to build the capital's ring road.

Zhou says Ethiopians always mistook him for Japanese or Korean because they had been building roads and plants there.

"But now, Japanese and Korean people, though not many, are mistaken for Chinese in Ethiopia."

Estimates put the number of Chinese in Ethiopia at 30,000, and most work on infrastructure projects. In the past, Zhou's company needed a Chinese worker for every three to four Ethiopians, now, because of training efforts, a Chinese worker can lead at least 15-20 local laborers.

"It is easy to see how we help create jobs in Ethiopia," Zhou says. "But compared with the West, we go beyond job generation to knowledge transfer."

In the case of expressway construction, Zhou says, the company for the first time has published detailed instructions of engineering procedures in both English and French. Each set of instructions and guidelines makes a stack about one meter high. "This is the essence of China's highway engineering know-how, but we made it freely available and readable for our African and Ethiopian friends," Zhou says.

Zhou says his company has also trained locals in the guidelines and instructions in classrooms and on site. At peak times, more than 7,000 locals and about 400 Chinese are employed on highway projects.

"We teach them not only how to build bridges, culverts and tunnels but also why we do so. Our mindset is to let the process of building such roads become a learning process for Ethiopians."

Some Ethiopians have worked their way up to construction bosses at his company, some have become part of the management team, and as some start their own companies, the competitiveness of subcontractors in Ethiopia has been greatly improved, Zhou says.

As Ethiopia's prime minister said, the expressway to Adama is starting to become a magnet for businesses and residents, and is likely to create an economic corridor between the two cities.

Factories, residential buildings and new shops have sprouted up at Tulu Dimtu, where the expressway starts on Addis Ababa's outskirts. "The convenience of transport has brought new opportunity to this area, which used to be remote," Zhou says. "We are delighted that our project can bring change."

Since the expressway is the company's first such project using Chinese standards, Zhou says, he hopes it can become a model for other African countries to copy. His company provided a six-year warranty, whereas international practice is only a one-year guarantee.

As an international contractor, Zhou says his company used to employ British or US standards when building roads in Africa. "Sometimes, we found that some technical requirements were ridiculous and costly, and they were only barriers that forced us to use their own equipment."

In 1998, when he began work on Addis Ababa's ring road, the British standards required his company to buy road lighting costing as much as $200 each while in 1998, the country's per capita GDP was no more than $150.

"Of course, it was produced in the UK, and we were not even allowed to buy those made in Germany, though they were much cheaper," Zhou says.

After working in Africa for years, Zhou says he has learned that the most important thing is to try to "put your foot in African shoes".

Many other lessons have been learned along the way, too.

"I was very lucky that all my co-workers were safe when we did the engineering work in 2007. We found that the old generation of our works was secretly protecting us."

fujing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 09/05/2014 page22)