Can Africa learn anything from how China runs its state companies?

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As African countries work to rebuild their economies from the wreckage caused by the ongoing COVID pandemic, policymakers will be looking at what they can do to bolster their countries’ state-owned enterprises (SOE). That may prompt them to examine China’s model of SOE governance for some inspiration. Although China’s SOE system is largely unique to China and would be impossible to replicate in African countries, Luke Jordan, a practitioner in resident at the MIT Governance Lab, recently suggested in a new paper published by SAIIA that are, in fact, certain attributes that African stakeholders should consider. Luke joins Eric & Cobus from Belin to discuss his paper and what specific lessons about China’s SOE experience he thinks would be applicable in an African context.