For John Udeagbala, chairman of a manufacturing company in the south-eastern industrial heart of Nigeria, the travails of local industry are quite clear: “We are dying from China.” Chinese prices are half or a quarter of local prices, he says and, even for products such as garments and footwear that are supposedly protected by import bans, smuggled goods are still flooding the market.
Some Nigerian businesses, particularly those supplying the fast-growing consumer goods markets around Lagos say they are managing well. But for many industrial manufacturers, their complaints echo those of many industries around the world struggling to compete with the Chinese: Chinese goods are shoddy, but consumers do not notice the difference; Chinese goods are sold below their true cost; China has advantages that domestic manufacturers do not.
