This survey was administered by Ethiopia’s Central Statistical Agency (CSA) in conjunction with their survey of Large and Medium Scale Manufacturing industries in 2017. The survey was administered to plant managers and was designed to elicit information about (i) formal links between foreign and domestic firms; (ii) the mechanisms by which knowledge is transferred and (iii) the benefits obtained from foreign firms. This report outlines and describes basic information about the data that may be helpful for users.For the past decade, Sub-Saharan Africa has been growing, yet growth is not the same as structural transformation. China's development trajectory since 1980 provides an example of how a government focused on modernization can marshal foreign capital and technology to assist in the reduction of poverty and economic transformation in manufacturing and agriculture. In Africa, China is largely seen as a competitor for local firms, primarily through imports. This competition can be devastating in some countries and some sectors, driving local firms out of business. Yet on the other hand, growing Chinese investment in African manufacturing and contract farming can also offer opportunities for joint ventures with local firms, training, and diffusion of more productive technologies. If this were to follow Asian experience, Chinese firms could be catalysts for local firms to move into manufactured exports, although they might also be footloose investors, moving on with only fleeting impact on local knowledge. In agriculture, Chinese investment might also be enclave, with little connection to local farmers - the picture presented in fears of "land grabbing" - or it might follow the pattern laid out by foreign investors in China, with out-growers, demonstration farms, and technology and skills transfers. Our earlier research suggested that Chinese firms are thinking strategically about backward linkages. For example, at least five Chinese shoe manufacturers we interviewed in 2009 had moved their shoe-making assembly lines to Nigeria, while still importing uppers and soles from China. In 2012, one company was in discussions with their Chinese supplier about moving to Nigeria to produce soles locally from Nigerian rubber. Similarly, we have identified Chinese contract farming investments and commercial agriculture projects with demonstration farms, advisers, and input supplies in places like Mali, Zimbabwe, and Malawi. This project will enable a more refined picture of the actual scope and impact of Chinese investment and the potential and experience of technology transfer in commercial agriculture and agro-industry. We will combine multiple methods: database construction, scoping studies, cluster surveys, a national survey, and eight paired, comparative case studies, following an approach tested in our earlier research on Chinese agro-industrial and commercial agriculture engagement in Ethiopia (2011-2014), and Chinese commercial agricultural investment in Zambia and Zimbabwe (2013). The scoping studies will allow us to better map existing Chinese (and other) investment in agro-industry and commercial agriculture, while the cluster surveys will provide an overview of existing linkages and opportunities for technology transfer. A further level of depth will be obtained through adding a technology-transfer module to two national surveys of manufacturers. Finally, eight in-depth, paired case studies will complement the survey research by using process-tracing to compare specific experiences of agro-industrial FDI and technology transfer in China, with Chinese and a similar non-Chinese experience in Africa. For example, we will study the institutional framework and approach that allowed the Thai firm CP Group to become China's largest foreign investor in the Chinese poultry industry, with significant technology spinoffs, and compare this with the spinoffs and technology transfer from significant Chinese and South African investors in Zambia's poultry industry (Zhongken Farm and Astral Foods). The output of the research will be a far more robust basis for analysis of the current and future possibilities for technology transfer in China's African investment, and guidelines for governments and development partners to derive maximum benefit from these opportunities.

The Technology Transfer survey was administered as an additional module in the 2016/17 survey of Large and Medium Scale Manufacturing industries (LMSM), conducted by Ethiopia’s Central Statistical Agency (CSA). There were 2,353 manufacturing establishments that completed the survey. The LMSM uses the International Standard Industrial Classification of All Industrial Activities (ISIC) Revision 3.1 to capture all establishments engaged in manufacturing industries, which engage ten persons or more and use power-driven machinery; it covers both public and private industries in all regions of the country, where establishments in scope of the survey are found. The LMSM is a census of all manufacturing establishments which engaged 10 persons or more (10+) and used power-driven machinery; the list of the universe of such firms operating in 2016/17 is maintained and updated by CSA. The data was collected from establishments by enumerators interviewing the establishments’ managers and recording the data to obtain the required information on manufacturing industries. Completed questionnaires were then edited and coded under CSA management. Additional details on the survey methodology can be found on the CSA website.