Out today in Bloomberg Businessweek is Nichole Sobecki’s cover story “Made in Ethiopia, by China.”
Fast fashion finds a new home in the Horn of Africa, where tax incentives, promises of infrastructure development, and ultra-cheap labor are drawing in companies producing for Guess, Levi’s, H&M and other labels. The Hawassa Industrial Park is only the most recent part of a vast centralized scheme: since 2014, Ethiopia has opened four giant, publicly owned industrial parks; it plans eight more by 2020.