An experimental film which mixes documentary footage and shadow puppetry to explore the labyrinthine world-within-a-world of African migrant traders working in the export markets of Guangzhou – the new capital of 21st Century global capitalism.

Guangzhou, the tropical manufacturing mecca in South China forms part of the largest city on Earth, a metropolitan region of more than 50 million inhabitants. Every year $200 billion of goods flow out of here to markets in the Global South. Meanwhile, thousands of African businessmen move in the opposite direction, hoping to make their fortunes in the city’s booming export business.

A new kind of capitalism is emerging from this South-South trade. This landscape is not shaped by the large-scale deals of multinational corporations but by the ‘low-end globalisation’ of small-scale traders. Doing business in cash, transporting goods in shipping containers or carry-on luggage, traders from Africa exploit their interstitial advantages to profit from a system from which typically excludes them.

Guangzhou’s downtown migrant enclave is known by locals as ‘Chocolate City’ for its thriving community of African expats (estimates range from 20,000 to 200,000). This is a world of mavericks and risk-takers, but the difference between profit and loss lies in their delicate relationships with Chinese counterparts.

Made in Chinafrica approaches this tangled China-Africa relationship through the stories recounted by African businesspeople working in Guangzhou. These tales reveal the complexity of life of Africans doing business in China; the excitement and frustration, the successes and failures, the alienation coupled with the sense of being at home. Made in Chinafrica is a further iteration of the film and research project, The Qilin.

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Thanks to: Goethe Insitut Nairobi, Chinafrika, Iwalewahaus

Supported by Filmstiftung NRW, Arts Council UKfull project