Positioning South Africa right in China

Photo / China Daily

Her entry strategy was a three-month self-sponsored Chinese-language course.

Lefifi was lucky that her former UK employer was the first client for the then nascent Africa@work, her startup advisory consultancy firm. Thus, she didn't have to worry over her keep.

In the meantime, however, she was seeing opportunitines for China-Africa work everywhere she looked.

Lefifi joined the South Africa-China Society from where she would scout for work. Ahead of the 2009 Forum on China Africa Cooperation conference in Sharmel-Sheikh, Egypt, Lefifi signed up as the China representative of Stellenbosch University's Centre for Chinese, the pioneer think tank in the field on the African continent.

Her contact list expanded considerably and, with it, a deepening of knowledge of the agencies of China-Africa relations, from the China Council for Promotion of International Trade to the African division of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

She also signed up for the China Export Import Bank scholar program, a requirement of which was attending Beijing's University of International Business and Economics for a business Chinese-language course.

Once she was on firm ground, Lefifi intensified her footprint in China-Africa dynamics in the voluntary sense of the word. In 2009 Lefifi and five other young Africans started the Young African Professionals and Students, a trailblazer that engaged in activities as diverse as job placement for recent African graduates to career counseling and mentoring, boasting a database of 3,000 people.