Salaries are only a part of the total cost. China obviously has much higher salaries, but their supply chains are a lot more efficient. Also cheap imports can prevent the growth of domestic manufacturing in the first place, since the initial investment can be quite high.

[–] zephyreks@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Salaries are an extremely significant proportion of costs in low- and medium-skill manufacturing. Sure, Africa might not be producing semiconductors this decade, but labour share is still something like 40-50% in China. This is despite China's shift towards high-skill manufacturing and high value-add products. For low-skill manufacturing and low value-add products, China is simply no longer cost-competitive to the alternatives because human labour is the primary productivity driver and automation is incredibly expensive.

Africa isn't going to be dumping tens of billions of dollars on semiconductor foundries and nobody is suggesting that. What people are suggesting is that Africa can move into categories like auto and appliances instead of textiles.