African Labour Agency in the Age of Global China

This article offers a grounded, labour‐centred perspective on debates around South–South cooperation by examining labour agency as a critical yet understudied dimension of African engagement with China's expanding influence. Bridging discussion of African agency which is informed by international relations with labour geographies’ conceptualization of labour agency, it foregrounds African workers as active yet embedded participants who negotiate, resist and reshape transnational development encounters. Empirical evidence draws on fieldwork in a major construction project in Ghana and multiple construction and manufacturing projects in Ethiopia. Findings reveal three interrelated forms of labour agency: through formal institutional and regulatory mechanisms; through casual, individualized strategies shaped by workers’ subjectivities and positionalities within labour markets and production systems; and through the formation and strategic politicization of alliances across time and space. The opportunities and constraints associated with these forms of agency reflect variations in local political‐economic contexts, including differences in institutional‐regulatory environments, state–society relations, and the relative power of Chinese managerial regimes. By centring labour as a site of transnational encounter, the authors challenge dominant elite‐driven narratives of mutual development in Africa–China cooperation, and instead highlight the uneven, contested and socially embedded power dynamics that unfold within concrete workplaces and beyond.