From Business Day (Johannesburg), via allafrica.com:

AFRICA cannot compete with Asia. Whereas our manufacturing sectors are closing shop in the face of stiff competition from China, Asian producers are absorbing greater amounts of manufacturing capacity.

While southeast Asian manufacturers, once fearful of Chinese competition, are ferreting out supply niches in the Chinese manufacturing machine, African producers are being squeezed out of the globalised market. It appears that African economies are consigned to continue to move in the wrong direction down the value chain and remain suppliers of nonbeneficiated resources to China-generated demand.