Growing ties stimulate city growth

Charles Lwampa's 36-year-old boss Zhang Hao is arguably the best-known Chinese businessman in Uganda. His company, Zhang's Group, is considered the country's biggest Chinese employer.

Like many other Chinese entrepreneurs, he started up in Uganda as a simple importer in 1999, of everything from shoes to schoolbags, and fishing nets to nails.

But that import business has grown since into a diversified enterprise encompassing a restaurant, a firm selling flat-screen televisions and a security company.

With a local workforce of 1,400, Zhang says he gradually dropped his early ambition of simply "making a fortune, and leaving".

"Reputation is everything here. That's based on quality products and having quality people working for you," he says.

"It's important for companies arriving in Africa to show they mean to stay, to bed themselves into the local community and to establish a reputation.

"Chinese business people need to realize, too, they have to be a little more patient than they might expect to be back home, or elsewhere. This is a place to consider long-term investment."

Localization is also key to success, he adds, as is being prepared to reward success.

A growing number of managers in his security, and television companies are local employees, and his company has an established system of awarding regular wage increases, to hold onto and also attract loyal employees.

"I have found it easy to work with our people here. We have had to be prepared to abide by local traditions and religions, but there's no great issues in that," he says.

Lwampa works as one of Zhang's business managers, and says the culture of his Chinese employers has helped him grow professionally.

"It was a challenge initially to fit into a Chinese management style. I thought we would have had very different cultural backgrounds," he says.

"But both sides actually complement each other. We have worked well together and gradually learned to appreciate each other's efficiency, planning, and hard work."

However, Zhang points out the arrival of Chinese business people like himself, has been far from plain sailing in Kampala, and elsewhere in Uganda.

The influx of shopkeepers, especially Chinese and Indian, for instance, has caused consternation among some local retailers.

"Every time something like that happens, it causes damage to some degree to the Chinese community here," says Zhang, who founded the China Enterprises Chamber of Commerce in Uganda with other Chinese investors in 2009, to protect their rights in the country.

He still believes more effort is needed to help local people "fully appreciate what Chinese business people have brought to the place" and can still bring in the future.

On the flipside, some feel strongly, too, that the growing Chinese presence has inspired many local business people to seek closer ties with China, and the Chinese businesses investing in Uganda.

"Without doubt, China is a big issue," says Abubaker Basajjabaka, a local Ugandan businessman who has enrolled in a Chinese class at the China-Uganda culture center in the capital.

"There's a lot of interest from the business community especially to learn Chinese to ease communication, and to widen their scope of opportunities that could emerge from China itself."

Basajjabaka says that business acquaintances of his have also been to China to study, bringing back with them qualifications - especially ones linked to IT - which have meant stronger job prospects back home in Uganda.

"I'd certainly like to see a lot more of this kind of cultural exchange. I am sure there would be enormous local interest," he says.

liuxiangrui@chinadaily.com.cn