The drive for Chinese investments in agriculture: Comparing South Africa to the continent

Agriculture forms a major platform through which the Chinese provide aid and invest in farmland in Africa. This long-standing engagement remains a highly contested arena based on a multifaceted approach, which has evolved over several decades. Several different programmes and policies have encouraged this engagement, spanning from pure aid projects, such as training of extension officers and deployment of agricultural experts, to pure commercial projects, such as direct investments in land and contract farming arrangements, and a mixture of aid and commercialisation, such as the agricultural technology demonstration centres. These various aid and commercial approaches have been implemented in several African countries and have been extensively documented by well-known scholars. That being said, this is less so the case for South Africa, where several Chinese-driven projects have been set up recently. This is relevant as the country is a top trade and investment partner of China in Africa, yet few studies have focussed on how China and South Africa are partnering in the agricultural sector. This chapter describes the Chinese-driven agricultural projects in South Africa (China Agricultural Technology Demonstration Centre, Chinese Pomelo project, Chinese Dairy farm and the Val de Vie Wine farm) in the context of how China is engaging elsewhere on the continent. Our analyses situate these projects in the framework of broader Chinese-driven agro-investment dynamics on the rest of the continent. These projects not only reflect the differing dynamics and practicalities occurring on the ground in Chinese agro-investments more generally, they also highlight the distinctive features of the South African context and its impact on Chinese investors realising ambitions in this sector.