Chinese businessmen slow to exploit potential for farming in Africa

Jin Jianzheng, 57, has a job many Chinese might envy - farming 13 hectares of virgin land along the Blue Nile in Sudan.

His vegetable farm in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, provides a taste of home for Chinese who moved there to exploit the country's oil and mineral resources. In peaceful times, he made a profit of US$100,000 a year.

The Chinese government has long encouraged businesses to invest in agriculture abroad, and Xi Jinping's first foreign trip as president in the past week involved visits to three African countries.

Beijing's investment push has prompted many to accuse China of engaging in large-scale land grabs, especially in Africa, but Jin said social unrest and harsh living conditions meant Chinese businessmen had been slow to exploit the potential for farming in the underdeveloped continent.

"Sudan has a small population but a lot of arable land," he said. "Areas along the Nile are good for agricultural production, but people fear the social environment, so few Chinese have farmed well there so far."

When he started his farm in 2006, there were eight Chinese-invested vegetable farms around Khartoum, serving 20,000 Chinese people, mostly workers at oilfields and construction sites in the capital and neighbouring areas. Only a handful had survived, he said, with many Chinese projects abandoned because of fighting between Sudan and South Sudan that started in late 2011.