Between Enclaves and Integration - Chinese and African Special Economic Zones in Sub-Saharan Africa

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Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are exceptions to a national institutional framework with specific laws and rules which have gained attention again with the rise and success of Chinese SEZs. As a result, in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and other regions of the Global South, governments are currently adopting the SEZ approach for their regional development plans. The goal is to concentrate public and private investment and develop a business-supportive infrastructural and institutional environment in their countries which are often marked by limited statehood, lacking capital, infrastructure deficits and weakly developed labour markets. To do this, these SSA governments aim to establish and host functioning SEZs which should be linked within global production networks and through that promote the broader socio-economic development of the surrounding region. Furthermore, since the mid-2000s, also Chinese developers are establishing SEZs in different African and other countries as a basis for investment. In this context, the question arises to what extent it is possible to transfer this approach to countries which significantly differ from China and are marked by the challenges outlined as well as a limited integration into global production networks. This proposed study aims to analyse 1. to what extent and 2. why and under which conditions differently implemented SEZs of African and Chinese developers in Sub-Saharan Africa contribute to regional development or develop into disintegrated enclaves. The study novelly combines conceptual considerations of policy transfer, enclaves and global production networks (GPN). Empirically, the study will analyse and compare SEZs of Chinese and domestic African developers and their embedding regions in two different SSA countries, Ethiopia and Zambia.