Making Africa in Shenzhen (Part Two)
By: Desmond Koney
Tags: Shenzhen, Makers, Tech Entrepreneurs, Ghana, Startup

Making Africa in Shenzhen (Part Two)

Learning the Business of Manufacturing

This is the second part of this series, read the first piece here.

Huaqiangbei (the electronics market) in Shenzhen at night

As I sat in the back seat of my new friends’ Volkswagen Golf car, listening to the mix of English and Mandarin R&B music, I felt a mix of gratitude and privilege for the opportunity to be in China and resolved to make the most of it. I thought about the events that had taken place in my life that had led me to that very moment. As I counted the street lights that rushed by me, I had a good feeling that I was on the right path in the “Silicon Valley of hardware”.

Like many makers I know who had their tertiary education in Africa, the curriculum didn’t meet my ambitions when I studied engineering. I searched for more knowledge where I could and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) became solace.

I have had to learn programming in Python and C, become an expert mechanical product designer, build IoT and machine learning applications, and groom my entrepreneurial acumen the hard way.

Like many hackers and makers, I invested in learning and I developed competence and boldness by undertaking freelance projects to make ends meet in the harsh economic realities graduates face after completing university. I know of some colleagues who have external hard drives loaded with any MOOC videos that had the download button. My ride to Shenzhen was figuring out why I, and many like me, subject ourselves to such rigorous discipline to learn beyond the scope of the university’s curriculum when it is not what most employers look out for. Now I find myself in a place where I felt I was going to be intellectually challenged and even felt a bit intimidated. I didn’t want to visit a factory where a high school student would challenge my mechanical engineering knowledge.

Due to my tight budget, I had booked a hostel to stay at in Shenzhen and had surveyed many options for accommodation before leaving Accra. My hosts insisted on getting me a hotel near their office instead, in a residential zone of Shenzhen. It was almost midnight when my hosts left me, and I was ushered to my new hotel room. After a few calls home to inform everyone interested in my safety that I had arrived at my destination, I jumped to bed and into a deep sleep.

I loved the weather I woke up to and loved the free Chinese breakfast my hotel served. At first I loved the denizens I met in elevators and subway stations who made me feel like a celebrity by their stares and offers to take pictures. After a while though, I felt like I was the only African in Shenzhen when even policemen asked for selfies. I was obviously the odd one on the crowded subway trains and in the busy night markets and I realized how easy it was not to have heard about Africa in this country. From the little I saw when I was there, Chinese media had virtually no African content and, so I thought people were relying on narratives from western media portrayals of Africa.

The Chinese clearly hold their language and culture in high esteem. All street signs and most public instruction was in Mandarin and I thought this was good for promoting a national identity. I had never fancied learning Mandarin until I heard so many people speak it. Overall, I think I experienced a very strong culture shock that took some learning and observing to overcome.

Night market and street food in Shenzhen

I woke up the next morning to my phone ringing; my hosts had taken the responsibility for making sure I woke up on time not to miss the morning breakfast. I was chauffeured to the head office of this factory to talk with the head of the manufacturing company; I mean, the biggest boss at the top of the corporate chain. Here I was being taken very seriously again.

After a nervous ride up the elevator I was introduced to a lean healthy-looking man behind a tea table. He served me tea before a few exchanges of pleasantries and then he pulled out his note book. We proceeded to talk about the economics and business behind the prototype we were going to build. I was made to understand that most of the figures were speculative but based on their experience in manufacturing. This was a conversation I wasn’t quite ready for because I was so focused on the designing of the prototype. I got to learn a lot about manufacturing out of this meeting.

Manufacturing isn’t only about putting components together to get them working, it is also about the logistics and supply chain. Most makers and DIY enthusiasts rarely think about the supply chain of their designs and its manufacturability. My hosts gave me a detailed analysis of their production capacity and even the dimensions of the products in a shipping container. I think that sourcing for inputs and managing logistics of finished products is a major problem in manufacturing in Africa.

Shenzhen has an amazing connection between suppliers, manufacturing factories, and logistics and handling companies. This connection is forged in deep trust and this is what makes the speed of manufacturing overwhelming. I took notes of every detail we discussed and even sketched the whole supply chain for my product. This also gave me a good sense of how to reduce costs and make certain contingencies for the mass production of my design. Working with these guys made me realize the advantages of manufacturing in Shenzhen.

I think there is always going to be a learning curve for any engineer who attempts to manufacture in Shenzhen, however, it’ll be more of a mentality change that is needed to adapt to the speed of manufacturing in Shenzhen.

The preparedness and work ethics I observed, and the attention I was given, even as an unassuming engineer building only a prototype and not commercial quantities was amazing. From my experience, to improve manufacturing in Ghana, the supply chain and sourcing for inputs must be shorter and the logistics of supplying to other markets must undergo some infrastructure upgrades.

After the intensive meeting and being helped to figure out the best supply chain for my product, I was introduced to the engineer that I would be working with throughout my stay, a very animated and energetic man who has had over 30 years of manufacturing experience in the type of product I was trying to make. He seemed elated to be tasked with working with the visitor in the room even though he spoke very little English and I no Mandarin. We however communicated with drawings and the Google Translate mobile application whenever sensitive information was being communicated.

Before going to Shenzhen, I had lots of debates with my colleagues about open innovation and I had just benefited from open innovation in a concrete way. The amount of knowledge that had been passed between me and my hosts was something that I would have paid consultants to attain elsewhere. Open innovation is embedded in the way of doing things in Shenzhen.

I gained some confidence in showing people my designs and calculations and expected to get useful insights that would make my product better. The willingness to share technical knowledge revealed what I thought was a genuine interest in the success of my venture. Open innovation improves the exchange of knowledge, especially knowledge gotten from experience, helps in manufacturing and building better products. Collaboration between different people with business, manufacturing, engineering and financial acumen is key to driving innovation.

Having these kinds of exchanges, not solely for financial rewards would create a culture of innovation in Ghana and would help Africa resolve most of its manufacturing challenges. In Shenzhen, I found the intellect of experts very accessible and at no additional cost, as long as you know who to ask. It was available to even foreigners like me.

I recommend that African hardware startups interested in manufacturing in Shenzhen leverage the intellectual resources of these experts. I think it is best to always find an engineer from the factory you want to produce with to help you figure things out. No need to waste valuable time trying to learn these things by yourself in your garage. You don’t need to be a jack of all trades. You don’t have to be the only engineer that builds your product. It will only take longer than necessary.

At the factory, just as in many parts of the country, I witnessed warmth from the factory workers. I was served some tea as we discussed the production plan. This included schedules and timelines and machine and factory layout to make the prototype production take place at a very fast but convenient rate.

I have studied a little bit about manufacturing and factory and project design in the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana. In Shenzhen I saw it being practiced and that’s where all the theories I had studied started to make sense.

My fellow Chinese engineer showing me around the city’s manufacturing zones.

My work schedule meant that I could finish the prototype production early and have a week to spare to tour the city. I liked this because prior to my arrival, I had far overestimated the number of days needed to produce the prototype. I knew Shenzhen was incredible with manufacturing, but this speed wasn’t quite what I anticipated. By the end of the day almost all the items needed for the productions had arrived at the factory and we were ready to proceed!

I decided to try get back to my hotel on my own for the day to clear my mind and fully figure out my finances given how quickly the prototype was coming along. I also wanted to get to know the city and meet some locals and hopefully meet other potential business partners. My hosts pointed me towards the bus station where I got on a bus and headed back to my hotel.

Follow this story in Part Three.