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TRADE-SENEGAL: Finding Opportunities Through Cheap Chinese Goods

Hamadou Tidiane Sy

DAKAR, Aug 27 2007 (IPS) - Allées du Centenaire, a neighbourhood in the heart of Senegal’s capital Dakar, may be lacking the trademark red lanterns but in the eyes of locals it is fast becoming the city’s unofficial Chinatown.

The area consists of a double row of houses of which the front sides have been transformed into shops. Chinese traders live in these homes-cum-shops, selling cheap goods imported from their home country to local petty traders.

Most of these small informal retailers are young Senegalese, usually with very little capital. Their numbers are growing due to the lack of jobs in the country’s formal sector. ‘‘I started the business very recently, only two months ago,’’ Mame Sane, a young woman in her mid-twenties, told IPS.

IPS spotted her in one of the Chinese shops in Allées du Centenaire, bargaining over the price of a pair of shoes which she was holding in her one hand. In her other hand was an enormous blue plastic bag stuffed with items she had purchased in similar shops.

She started her business with the measly amount of 50,000 CFA (about 100 dollars). ‘‘It is much better than sitting idle at home,’’ said Mame, who re-sells her products to ‘‘friends and acquaintances’’ in her neighbourhood of Parcelles Assainies on the outskirts of Dakar.

She adds 500 CFA (1 dollar) to her retail price for each 1,000 CFA (two dollars) that she spends, she explained.

Mame is one of an unknown number of young people who, on the back of cheap China-made goods, have found opportunities to start their own small businesses.

One sees them going from door to door, offering anything from shoes to electric lamps and notebooks to watches at ‘‘unbeatable prices’’. Others face the scorching heat to run between cars in the busy streets of the capital city, showing their merchandise to motorists. The luckiest ones exhibit their goods in tiny stalls, set up wherever they find space. Trade has been facilitated by the resumption of diplomatic relations between Senegal and China in October 2005, making it easier for Senegalese importers to bring in Chinese products. However, some Senegalese importers allege that their Chinese counterparts are nothing but ruthless profit makers.

According to Senegal’s ministry of commerce, Chinese imports represented 94 percent of the total value of goods traded between the two countries in 2006. At a meeting between Chinese and Senegalese businesspeople in Dakar in July this year, Senegal’s minister of foreign affairs Cheikh Tidiane Gadio urged an improvement in the balance of trade between the two countries.

Trade relations are ‘‘largely in favour of China’’, the official news agency Xhinua reported on July 13, 2007, indicating that China is the fourth largest supplier of goods to Senegal.

Soumboul Sylla believes that the activities of Chinese traders in Senegal should be better regulated as these activities ‘‘represent a threat’’ to the national economy and to those local large firms which rely on imports.

Sylla, who was involved in textile imports from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates before turning to Chinese products, is a member of the very influential Senegalese Union of Traders and Industrialists (known by its French acronym UNACOIS).

UNACOIS planned a protest march in 2004 against the Chinese presence in the capital. Sylla believes local business should get preference because ‘‘while the Chinese traders bring in petty, valueless items and accessories, the Senegalese importers bring in the more important goods, such as furniture and bedroom suites’’.

In the name of the ‘‘free market’’, the union’s proposal was strongly opposed by poor consumers and petty traders who make their living from selling Chinese goods. UNACOIS has since changed its strategy but not its position. The organization is lobbying the Senegalese government to urge its new Beijing friends to obtain ‘‘reciprocity’’ from China. In short, Sylla explained, they want Senegalese traders to be able to open shops, settle and do business in China as easily as their Chinese counterparts do in Senegal.

But the Chinese community who are settled in Dakar also have complaints. ‘‘I used to pay customs fees of 800,000 CFA (1,660 dollars) for a container of goods. Now I pay CFA 12 or 13 million (24,000 to 27,000 dollars),’’ claimed Zhen Yan-Ling in broken French.

Yan-Ling was the only Chinese shop-owner who was willing to speak to IPS, seemingly confirming a perception believed to be true by many Senegalese: that the Chinese community is secretive.

The interview was interrupted by a young man in his early twenties who pointed at a shirt that he wanted to buy. Another bargaining session started. Yan-Ling proposed a price of CFA 700 per piece (1.4 dollars). The young man offered CFA 400 (0.80 dollar), promptly adding: ‘‘I will buy 500 items!’’ And so the two continued bargaining.