Thesis presented on December 13, 2022
African countries aspire to industrial development to diversify their exports, currently concentrated on natural resources. However, the electrification and the reinforcement of the competitiveness of national companies remain a challenge when companies face fierce import competition, including from Chinese products. This topic is at the heart of the present thesis, which is divided into three chapters.
The first chapter analyses the impact of Tanzanian households’ access to electricity on their consumption and income from home-based activities. The findings suggest that electricity access leads to an increase in households’ day-to-day consumption. Likewise, turnover and the number of jobs created have resulted in capital-intensive businesses, but electricity is essential to be capital-intensive.
In the second chapter dedicated to the effect of Sino-African trade on African firms’ growth, the empirical evidence suggests that China’s penetration reduces the growth of small and younger firms, while larger firms have experienced a pro-competitive effect. Exporting firms were hit twice, as their growth decreased when China’s penetration increased in the common external market.
Finally, the third chapter has investigated how China’s penetration into African markets has affected firms’ performance. From the theoretical perspective, firms’ productivity and energy intensity are inversely related, while there is a logarithmic relationship between these indicators and firm production level.
Empirical results showed that China’s penetration into the African market has led to a decrease in both productivity and energy intensity of small and medium firms, but has exerted no significant impact on large firms. Based on the theoretical results, we deduce that the decrease in energy intensity could be explained by the reduction of the production level. While both electricity and financial obstacles affect negatively firms’ performance, small firms facing electricity barriers and large firms facing financial barriers have improved their performance under the impulse of the Chinese competition. Empirical results have also revealed that productivity negatively affects energy intensity, while there is no reverse causality.
