Ethiopian/Eritrean Migrant Entrepreneurs Created Shopping District in South Africa

 The Conversation published on 26 October 2025 an article titled "Ethiopian Quarter: How Migrants Have Shaped a Thriving Shopping District in South Africa's City of Gold" by Tanya Zack.

Entrepreneurial migrants from Ethiopia and Eritrea created a major shopping center in Johannesburg, South Africa, by repurposing abandoned buildings into more than 3,000 tiny shops that draw on global supply chains, mainly Chinese wholesalers.  The model has effectively turned the inner city into an inland port.   

Kenya and Decent Jobs

The African Research Institute published on 30 June 2017 a study titled "Kenya Is Failing to Create Decent Jobs" by Kwame Owino, Noah Wamalwa, and Ivory Ndekei.

The number of middle-income earners in Kenya is small and not expanding any faster than GDP growth. This has important implications for Kenya's economic and social development.

Sub-Saharan Africa Economic Outlook (English and French)

The IMF released in May 2017 its "Regional Economic Outlook: Sub-Saharan Africa."

In 2016, growth in Sub-Saharan Africa slowed in about two-thirds of the countries in the region and is estimated to have reached just 1.5 percent. This marked the region's worst performance in more than two decades. A rebound to 2.5 percent in 2017 will be driven by one-off factors in the three largest economies--a recovery in oil production in Nigeria, higher public spending ahead of elections in Angola, and the fading of drought effects in South Africa--combined with improvements in their terms of trade. Nonetheless, the underlying regional momentum remains weak and Sub-Saharan African growth will continue to fall well short of past trends and barely exceed population growth.

The report contains sections on restoring the conditions for strong and sustainable growth, restarting Sub-Saharan Africa's growth engine, and the informal economy in Sub-Sahara Africa.

China and Africa's Informal Economy

In a 31 March 2015 blog post titled "China-Africa Trade and Investment: Benefiting Africa's Rural Informal Economy?" Xiaoxue Weng makes an important point about the significance of Africa's informal economy, which is estimated to include 50 percent of Africa's total economy.  The author then relates the informal economy to Chinese trade and investment.  

It is critical for Africans and outsiders alike to understand the working of Africa's informal economy.  It performs many useful functions.  But it also has downsides.  It is well known for ignoring even reasonable government regulations. 

I found one quote from a Cameroonian villager especially insightful and worrying: "The government could take away our land and trees any moment, so we'd rather sell all the trees to the Chinese as soon as we can."  It takes hundreds of years to grow some tropical hardwoods to maturity.  This approach by the Cameroonian villager will only devastate the environment for short-term monetary advantage of a few people.  This kind of practice is exactly what African governments and foreign importers need to avoid.