China’s Enterprise Reform and Development Society (CERDS) is expanding its engagement with African governments, focusing not on financing or constructing infrastructure but on a less visible part of the equation: how the state-owned companies that own and operate that infrastructure are managed.
The China-based organisation, linked to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), specialises in research, policy advice, SOE governance and management reform. Its growing engagement with African institutions suggests that China’s infrastructure relationship with the continent is increasingly extending beyond the construction of roads, railways and ports into the institutional systems needed to make those assets commercially productive.
This is particularly evident in Tanzania, where CERDS has entered into cooperation with the Office of the Treasury Registrar (OTR) on state-asset management and SOE reform. The partnership covers research, policy development, governance frameworks, performance evaluation and capacity building. Pilot institutions include Air Tanzania, the Tanzania Ports Authority and Tanzania Railways Corporation, bringing Chinese management experience directly into organisations responsible for critical national infrastructure.
CERDS is promoting approaches to market-oriented SOE management, stronger performance assessment and greater operational efficiency. Training, technical exchanges and benchmarking with Chinese institutions form part of the cooperation, giving African officials and managers exposure to how China has transformed many of its own state enterprises from purely administrative entities into commercially oriented organisations.
The approach could have particular significance for infrastructure projects such as the Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA) and the wider Dar es Salaam logistics corridor. Building a railway or expanding a port creates physical capacity; whether that capacity generates economic value depends heavily on the institution operating it. Poor management, weak maintenance, inefficient pricing or political interference can leave expensive infrastructure underutilised even after construction is complete.
That is where CERDS occupies a different position from better-known Chinese infrastructure actors. Institutions such as China Exim Bank and Chinese engineering and construction companies can provide capital, engineering and construction, while CERDS works on the institutional side, the “software” that determines how the physical infrastructure performs once it exists.
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For African governments, the attraction is potentially significant. Many countries have accumulated large portfolios of state-owned assets but continue to struggle with weak governance, poor financial performance and limited managerial capacity. Chinese SOE reform experience offers one possible model for addressing those problems, particularly in sectors such as transport, energy, aviation and logistics.
The emerging relationship therefore represents a broader dimension of China-Africa cooperation: China is not only helping build African infrastructure; it is increasingly sharing the management philosophy and institutional practices it developed to operate its own state-owned infrastructure companies. The real test will be whether those practices translate into more efficient African SOEs, better-performing public assets and infrastructure that generates economic value long after the construction crews have left.
