President Jacob Zuma led the delegation in August, which included agriculture minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson, At the 10th AMT Agri Outlook Conference, Edinger said the National Agricultural Marketing Council called her a week before Joemat-Pettersson was due to be in China, to ask for a list of projects she could present to her Chinese counterpart. “This is an example of the poor preparation that characterised the trip,” Edinger said. “We don’t take China seriously enough, and they are very serious.”
The minister earlier admitted as much to Farmer’s Weekly. “We can learn a lot from the Chinese way of doing business. They’re very punctual, and very prepared. If they schedule a meeting for Monday, you don’t arrive an hour late,” she said. Matthew Birtch of Frontier Advisory said the major problem was the management of the itinerary. “It was only given to the business delegates the night before they were due to leave. From a political strategic level the trip was OK, but on a business-to-business level it was not great—there were only 20 businesspeople from China meeting with 330 or so from South Africa. The South African government could definitely have secured more participation from the Chinese.”
Birtch said the same disorganisation characterised the early August state visit to Russia. “I think it’s indicative of the fact that the work of our public sector servants in South Africa is not incentivised, whereas their Chinese counterparts work for highly corporatised parastatals,” he said.
Edinger said China wants to become a partner to Africa instead of a donor. “Investment will be state-driven but will also happen at grass-roots level. I think we’ll see greater export opportunities facilitated through credit lines – Chinese machinery in exchange for agricultural produce. The agri technologies best suited for transfer from China to Africa are water- and soil-related.” She said it was important to have someone on the ground in China to find the right supplier and establish trust.
Edinger also said that the low prices at which China produced products were not sustainable. “Workers in China are organising, wages are rising and a lot of the dirtier industry is being relocated offshore, whereas the more skilled, technological industry is being consolidated. We could see a lot of their dirtier industry work being relocated to Africa,” she said.
