Like dozens of others from his sleepy fishing village on China’s south-east coast, Wen Wenyuan set off a few years ago to start a new life in Africa. But this year he decided to return.
Wen is one of hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers — both private entrepreneurs and employees of state-run companies — to have returned from Africa in recent years, as lower commodity prices hit many of the continent’s economies.
Sub-Saharan Africa grew at 1.5 per cent in 2016, its slowest in two decades, while South Africa slipped into recession this year. “The economy got worse, so we came back,” says Mr Wen, 33, who ran a supermarket near Johannesburg for five years.