Ni hao, new hire: Africa’s growing Mandarin job boom

The change is partially being driven by the expanding footprint of smaller Chinese companies, which would rather hire locally than bring their own staff from China, and by the increasing role played by African firms in trade.

Few of the thousands of Chinese executives, managers and workers who pour into Africa every year are proficient in the languages of their host countries, according to recruiters and analysts.

This is true for the most widely spoken official languages like English or French, and is especially the case with indigenous African languages.

“There is now a greater need for…