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Despite the growing attention on uncontrolled and unprofitable urban sprawling in many African countries, few pragmatic solutions have been raised or effectively implemented. While uncontrolled and unprofitable urban expansions happened primarily due to poor land use management and dysfunctional land market, the cost of land management enforcement and reform is high. This paper suggests that the recently re-emerging special economic zones (SEZs) in Africa could be a practical way of using government intervention to reduce uncontrolled urban expansion and optimize urban land use. By evaluating the spatial impacts of two SEZs on their host cities in Ethiopia and Zambia, this paper demonstrates that SEZs could notably change urban expansion in terms of its speed, direction, and spatial structure. By using SEZs as an experimental area for land policy reform, the government can also effectively unlock a profitable urban development model with the functional primary and secondary land market. However, the diverging results in Ethiopia and Zambia also show that the optimizing effect can be significant only when the government is participatory and can fulfil its public function, including delivering proper planning in advance, lunching land policy reform, and even executing compulsory land acquisition for public interests.
Jiabo Xu; Xingping Wang. Reversing Uncontrolled and Unprofitable Urban Expansion in Africa through Special Economic Zones: An Evaluation of Ethiopian and Zambian Cases. Sustainability 2020, 12, 9246 .
AMA StyleJiabo Xu, Xingping Wang. Reversing Uncontrolled and Unprofitable Urban Expansion in Africa through Special Economic Zones: An Evaluation of Ethiopian and Zambian Cases. Sustainability. 2020; 12 (21):9246.
Chicago/Turabian StyleJiabo Xu; Xingping Wang. 2020. "Reversing Uncontrolled and Unprofitable Urban Expansion in Africa through Special Economic Zones: An Evaluation of Ethiopian and Zambian Cases." Sustainability 12, no. 21: 9246.
Development zones have been an important spatial approach to promoting economic development since China’s reform and opening-up. They have also been major contributors to the processes of China’s industrialization and urbanization. Along with improvements in the worldwide industrial division of labor and the gradual implementation of China’s development zones’ Go Global strategy, it is necessary for Africa, a hot spot of global industrialization in recent years, to learn from China’s development zone model. By attracting China’s capital, technology and enterprises to Africa via Sino-African co-built development zones, a pattern of high complementarity and mutual development between China and Africa can be formed which does favor further improvement of the global industrial division of labor. In order to study the applicability and prospect of China’s development zone model in Africa as per the above-mentioned international situation, this paper first sorts out the development course of China’s development zones and discusses their roles in China’s industrialization and urbanization. Subsequently, this paper analyzes the status quo of industrial development in Africa as a whole and the differences in industrial development between China and Africa, aiming to justify the timing of industrial transfer from China to Africa by constructing Sino-African co-built development zones. Lastly, this paper analyzes the current situation of six Sino-African co-built development zones by focusing on their operation modes, industry types and investment promotion models. In the authors’ view, Sino-African co-built development zones can function as a new window of China-African cooperation, a new carrier of African industrialization, and a new engine of global industrial restructuring. China should adhere to the general principles of ‘Sino-African Integration, Multi-Cooperation, Mutual Benefit, Scientific Location, Systematic Planning, Cluster Growth and Open Development’ in the planning and construction of development zones in Africa, effectively promoting Africa as the very important part of the global industry system.
Xingping Wang; Kai Zhu; Yingcheng Li; Jiabo Xu. Applicability and prospect of China’s development zone model in Africa. Chinese Geographical Science 2017, 27, 860 -874.
AMA StyleXingping Wang, Kai Zhu, Yingcheng Li, Jiabo Xu. Applicability and prospect of China’s development zone model in Africa. Chinese Geographical Science. 2017; 27 (6):860-874.
Chicago/Turabian StyleXingping Wang; Kai Zhu; Yingcheng Li; Jiabo Xu. 2017. "Applicability and prospect of China’s development zone model in Africa." Chinese Geographical Science 27, no. 6: 860-874.