Whether they are in the lounge, in the kitchen or elsewhere in their homes, Africans are now being given a front-row view of how their world, and the world of trade, is changing.

Their guides are the appliances they use to make their lives easier, appliances that used to carry names such as Philips, Samsung and Sanyo, but that now increasingly bear names such as Haier, Hisense and Shinco.

The prevalence of these names is the result not only of the highly competitive prices at which they are sold, but also of an unrelenting drive by Chinese companies to innovate and to localize everything they sell.