To what extent do Chinese construction firms foster linkages with the local economy and support local development outcomes? Despite increasing literature on the impact of Chinese infrastructure projects in Africa, relatively less attention has been paid to the specifics of this interaction, particularly concerning the characteristics of Chinese firms and the host country’s environment in which such partnership unfolds. Drawing on official documents, firm-level surveys and semi-structured interviews, this article examines how both private and public Chinese firms influence local development in Ethiopia’s infrastructure sector. The analysis focuses on several key factors shaping this impact, including employment generation, collaboration and subcontracting with domestic firms, technology and skills transfer and the creation of linkages between infrastructure projects and local manufacturing. The findings indicate that in Ethiopia, many Chinese companies are becoming increasingly integrated with the local economy. However, these synergies are neither uniform nor consistent across all firms or sectors. The study concludes that local economic benefits are contingent upon multiple factors, including the specific characteristics of Chinese firms, the strength of local capacity and the effectiveness of policies designed to regulate and promote local development.

As infrastructure development has become a key ingredient in Africa–China relations, the role of African governments in co-determining the design, funding and governance of the continent's infrastructures has come under close scrutiny. This article sheds light on the rehabilitation of a symbol of Sino–African friendship: the Tanzania–Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA). Employing Jessop's strategic-relational approach, it is shown that the strategies of the shareholding governments in the negotiations with a Chinese consortium were informed by strategic learning from previous railway privatisations, corresponding cost–benefit analyses and reflection about Chinese commercial interests. Zambia's indebtedness and Tanzania's autocratic developmental state under President Magufuli formed crucial elements of the structural context in which the fate of Africa's Freedom Railway was negotiated. The article transcends both crudely structuralist accounts of a supposedly all-powerful China and voluntarist conceptions of African agency that are void of structure. Assessing (African) agency requires analytical sensitivity towards the dialectical interaction between specific strategic capacities and strategically selective political–economic contexts.