Open for business

It employs 1,300 people, only 13 of whom are Chinese. It makes high-end wax prints used in the colorful traditional clothes that locals wear, using machinery that it brought in from Manchester in the United Kingdom.

Arthur Lau, 44, the company's financial controller, says the company is the largest textile firm in Ghana.

"The market here is huge. We have had the challenge in recent years that people like to wear T-shirts and not formal traditional dress but the demand for it is still there."

The company recently had a dispute with the Ghana tax authorities, resulting in its factory's temporary closure.

Labor relations are also often highlighted as a major issue for Chinese companies operating in Africa. Akosombo's average wage is $200 a month with 38 days' holiday, pension and medical care for spouses and up to four children. "We have a workers' union in the factory and we do have some small disputes from time to time but nothing major," Lau says.

One of the major issues for the company is that it is no longer cheap to manufacture in Africa. The cost of labor is only 30 percent lower than in China but the productivity of workers is much lower.

"A Chinese worker is two or three times as productive as an African worker. Our productivity is actually higher than most factories because we put an emphasis on training and sensible management methods."

Many of the workforce have been with the company a long time. Samuel Owuso-Brown, 57, now assistant manager at the weaving department, joined when he was 19.

"It is a challenge working for a Chinese company but also very interesting and that is why I have spent most of my working life here. The Chinese are very hard-working people so you should be a hard-working man."

Owuso-Brown believes if it had not been for the Chinese management the company would no longer exist.

"There are some textile companies under African management but many of them have closed down. Even though we are the majority of the workforce here, it is Chinese who have brought in the ideas and the transfer of technology."

Chris Alden, reader in international relations at the London School of Economics and author of China in Africa, one of the leading books on the China-Africa relationship, says many Chinese companies are now seeing an opportunity of locating in Africa to take advantage of preferential trade agreements.

Chinese companies often face trade entry barriers in Western countries but these disappear if they can present themselves as African by having a base on the continent.

"This has been happening particularly in the textile field but also in the area of assembly where companies can brand a factory as Egyptian and gain access to Europe and the United States," he says.

But it is not a concerted push to take advantage of trade pacts - a lot of Chinese private sector investment is haphazard. Verhoeven at Oxford University says it is a mistake to see the presence of Chinese companies as part of some grand African strategy on the part of the Chinese government.

"It is actually all very fragmented. It is often small and medium-sized enterprises that are often completely off the radar as far as the Chinese embassies are concerned," he says.