A glaring absence in the story of China in Africa is Chinese manufacturing. The Asian powerhouse may be the workshop of the world, but it has set up few of its own workshops in Africa - even as it keeps expanding its overall investments on the continent.

The World Bank has expressed its desire to work with China to change that and jump start African industrialisation. But two academics have just set out the reasons why it’s going to be an uphill battle, in a short analysis note from the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment.

On the African side, they highlight well-known difficulties linked to what they call poor local institutional conditions, namely “unreliable power and water supply, transportation, communication, poor governance, inhospitable regulatory environments, [and the] work ethic.”