On the other hand, the bridging and tunneling expertise developed by these projects would enable more extensive public works across other domains as well, so it’s not “wasted money”.
Also, what people miss is that Africa today lacks education across the stack. It isn’t the case that African countries have a well-educated labour pool but simply no expertise in HSR (like the US, which will spend on the order of $100 billion trying to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles with HSR), but that many African countries simply lack the well-educated labour pool in the first place. Building out these large projects is simultaneously a means of economic stimulus and a means of targeted education in core engineering disciplines.
This kind of work is essential to before there can be any hope of replacing more skilled workers with African ones. That’s also why you see a lot of foreign workers on these projects: the expertise and experience simply isn’t there domestically to ensure that the project can complete on-time and under-budget.
That assumes that these projects will use African labor, which may not be the case. Chinese infrastructure projects abroad are typically Chinese funded, Chinese designed, and Chinese built. Some local unskilled labor may be used, but Chinese construction companies are likely going to keep the key technical parts in-house.
This also brings a question of economic stimulus. A project can only really be an economic stimulus to a region if the project uses local labor and materials. I really doubt Chinese construction firms are going to use local rebar for production; a big reason that China is motivated to build out Africa’s High Speed Rail is that the demand for these projects has dropped in China. The apparatus to make high speed rail in China is still there while there is no longer any demand for the internal market.
Again, I think you’re misunderstanding. “Unskilled labour” by the Western definition is already considered decently skilled. This was a problem that China ran into as they industrialized and it’s a problem that African countries will also run into: there simply isn’t enough well-trained, experienced skilled labour. People are aware of this.
You can’t train a nuclear physicist if you can’t train an electrical engineer, and you can’t train an electrical engineer if you can’t train a construction worker. This doesn’t solve the problem of nuclear physicist or electrical engineer, but it should at least solve the problem of construction worker.
I know some people are aware of it, but not everyone.
Also, China is in the habit of not even training the construction worker. Chinese SOE’s have a lot of projects being built outside of China that don’t use local labor except for the most basic tasks. This is different from a lot of Western companies that will generally tap more into the local labor pool.
This isn’t a value judgement one way or another, but a statement of differences between the two.
Oh for sure, Western projects do tap more of the local labour pool. They’re also more likely to be overbudget and behind schedule (California HSR and most transit/rail projects in the US, etc). To some degree, that’s just a difference in management technique and there’s definitely an advantage to training more workers at the cost of time and money.
On the other hand, those “basic” tasks only seem basic because we have had a proper Western education… And that’s not something we should be taking for granted.
On the other hand, the bridging and tunneling expertise developed by these projects would enable more extensive public works across other domains as well, so it’s not “wasted money”.
Also, what people miss is that Africa today lacks education across the stack. It isn’t the case that African countries have a well-educated labour pool but simply no expertise in HSR (like the US, which will spend on the order of $100 billion trying to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles with HSR), but that many African countries simply lack the well-educated labour pool in the first place. Building out these large projects is simultaneously a means of economic stimulus and a means of targeted education in core engineering disciplines.
This kind of work is essential to before there can be any hope of replacing more skilled workers with African ones. That’s also why you see a lot of foreign workers on these projects: the expertise and experience simply isn’t there domestically to ensure that the project can complete on-time and under-budget.
That assumes that these projects will use African labor, which may not be the case. Chinese infrastructure projects abroad are typically Chinese funded, Chinese designed, and Chinese built. Some local unskilled labor may be used, but Chinese construction companies are likely going to keep the key technical parts in-house.
This also brings a question of economic stimulus. A project can only really be an economic stimulus to a region if the project uses local labor and materials. I really doubt Chinese construction firms are going to use local rebar for production; a big reason that China is motivated to build out Africa’s High Speed Rail is that the demand for these projects has dropped in China. The apparatus to make high speed rail in China is still there while there is no longer any demand for the internal market.
Again, I think you’re misunderstanding. “Unskilled labour” by the Western definition is already considered decently skilled. This was a problem that China ran into as they industrialized and it’s a problem that African countries will also run into: there simply isn’t enough well-trained, experienced skilled labour. People are aware of this.
You can’t train a nuclear physicist if you can’t train an electrical engineer, and you can’t train an electrical engineer if you can’t train a construction worker. This doesn’t solve the problem of nuclear physicist or electrical engineer, but it should at least solve the problem of construction worker.
I know some people are aware of it, but not everyone.
Also, China is in the habit of not even training the construction worker. Chinese SOE’s have a lot of projects being built outside of China that don’t use local labor except for the most basic tasks. This is different from a lot of Western companies that will generally tap more into the local labor pool.
This isn’t a value judgement one way or another, but a statement of differences between the two.
Oh for sure, Western projects do tap more of the local labour pool. They’re also more likely to be overbudget and behind schedule (California HSR and most transit/rail projects in the US, etc). To some degree, that’s just a difference in management technique and there’s definitely an advantage to training more workers at the cost of time and money.
On the other hand, those “basic” tasks only seem basic because we have had a proper Western education… And that’s not something we should be taking for granted.