Abstract
Note: Page references in this review correspond to the Kindle edition (299 pages).
When I conducted fieldwork in Ghana in 2023 and 2024 for my dissertation on Chinese engagement in the port sector, my attention focused on infrastructure, logistics, and finance. Yet beyond the ports and policy discussions, another Chinese presence was impossible to ignore. Across Accra, Tema, Takoradi, and roadside kiosks far from major cities, the same blue and white Tecno signs appeared again and again. Tecno, one of several smartphone brands owned by the Chinese firm Transsion Holdings, was visible far beyond high-end urban malls. Its branding appeared on wooden stalls, above corrugated metal shops, and in rural trading centers. The sheer ubiquity of the brand raised a puzzle: how had a Chinese company become so deeply embedded in the everyday commercial landscape of Ghana and West Africa? Miao Lu's The Transsion Approach provides a compelling answer, explaining how Transsion became “the king of the mobile phone in Africa” (p. 15).
Lu's contributions are conceptual as well as empirical. She proposes technology translation as an alternative to the more familiar idea of technology transfer. While transfer suggests technologies move intact from one context to another, translation emphasizes adaptation as they encounter new social, cultural, and material environments. Transsion's strategy in Africa illustrates this process. Company managers describe their approach as “deep ploughing,” a metaphor drawn from agriculture that emphasizes sustained cultivation and long-term investment before results emerge. As Lu notes, this contrasts sharply with Silicon Valley's model of blitzscaling, described as “a high-speed land grab in the hope of finding gold” (16). The book's core research question interrogates how private Chinese firms succeed in African markets. The answer lies in the firm's willingness to recalibrate its phones and business strategies in response to African consumer preferences and retail ecosystems. These arguments are developed most fully in Chapter 1 and revisited in the concluding discussion of “deep ploughing.”
The study speaks directly to scholarship on China–Africa relations, which has often focused on state-owned enterprises, infrastructure megaprojects, and high-level political ties. By contrast, Lu turns to a private technology firm operating in highly competitive retail spaces. Her analysis challenges depictions of African markets as passive recipients of second-tier foreign goods and instead highlights their active role in shaping corporate strategy.
The methodological foundations of the study, including the selection of Transsion and Ghana as cases and the author's reflections on positionality, are laid out in Chapter 2. The book is grounded in multisited ethnography in China and Ghana between 2018 and 2023. Lu draws on interviews with company managers, distributors, marketers, and small-scale retailers, complemented by observation of retail and distribution practices. This approach allows her to trace how products move from corporate decisions to market stalls.
Several empirical insights stand out in Chapter 3. Lu highlights localized features “such as dual or multiple SIM cards, long-lasting batteries, and cameras optimized for darker skin tones” (14) to illustrate how Transsion tailored its products to African markets. These design choices are not superficial marketing tactics but responses to consumer preferences and everyday usage patterns. Multiple SIM card slots address uneven network coverage and price differences across telecom providers, while long battery life responds to electricity instability. As Lu notes, Transsion sells “both feature phones and smartphones through three brands—itel, Tecno, and Infinix—with prices ranging from US$10 to US$200” (81). This wide price range helps explain the company's reach across both low-income and emerging middle-class consumer segments.
The book's analysis of distribution networks, developed most fully in Chapter 4, is particularly strong in reconstructing the distribution networks that underpin Transsion's market penetration. Informal traders, credit arrangements, and dense retail relationships emerge as central components of the firm's strategy. Lu shows how these networks extend into rural Ghana and how local distributors act as key translators of Transsion's business model, even as the balance of power within the distribution system has shifted in the post-COVID period.
Lu also highlights the importance of after-sales service in Chapter 5. Transsion's affiliated service network, Carlcare, has become one of the largest repair systems in Africa and serves as the official service center for the company's phone brands. As Lu notes, Carlcare aims to provide “professional service” at a “fair price” (189), helping build consumer trust in markets where earlier generations of Chinese phones had damaged the reputation of Chinese electronics. More broadly, the book argues that repair is not just a technical process but a form of institutionalization through which local labor is formalized and incorporated into a more standardized service system.
One of the most compelling aspects of the book is the way it challenges prevailing assumptions about Chinese firms in Africa. Much of the public and scholarly discourse portrays these firms as inattentive to local conditions, reluctant to hire or empower local employees, and inclined to treat African markets as outlets for inferior products rather than as serious sites of innovation and growth. Lu's study unsettles these narratives. By documenting Transsion's sustained engagement with African consumers, retailers, repairers, and intermediaries, she presents a company that invests in understanding local demand and adapting accordingly. At the same time, the book avoids a celebratory tone, acknowledging that tensions and conflicts persist, and the author does “not assume egalitarian partnership is the inevitable outcome” (p. 228).
The book's strengths are clear. It broadens the study of China–Africa economic relations beyond infrastructure and state contracts, directing attention to everyday technologies that structure daily life. It also provides a useful framework for understanding how firms from emerging economies operate in other developing markets. The detailed attention to design, distribution, and repair is particularly valuable, as these dimensions are often overlooked in macro-level analyses.
At the same time, the book points toward several avenues for further research. While the concept of technology translation is persuasive, a more systematic comparison with other Chinese or non-Chinese technology firms would help clarify whether the Transsion approach is distinctive or part of a broader pattern. In addition, while the book highlights adaptation and market embeddedness, it devotes less sustained attention to the political economy implications of digital market dominance. Questions related to regulatory capacity, data governance, and long-term technological dependency remain largely in the background.
Nonetheless, The Transsion Approach makes an important contribution to both scholarly and policy discussions. It reminds researchers that China–Africa relations are not only shaped in presidential palaces or at project sites, but also in small shops, informal markets, and the daily choices of consumers. For those who have witnessed the ubiquity of Tecno signage across Ghana and West Africa, Lu's book provides an empirically rich explanation. What once appeared as a simple marker of Chinese commercial presence now represents the outcome of adaptation, negotiation, and learning within African markets.
