Research on Personal Safety Risk of Labor Service in Africa from the Perspective of Contractors

Abstract The “Belt and Road” Initiative creates great opportunities open to Chinese International Construction Enterprises (ICEs). Compared with domestic projects, foreign projects are facing complicated external environment. The personal safety of engineers threatened by terrorism, contagious disease, kidnap, etc. The probability of personal safety risk also increases dramatically. Africa, as one of the regions with most frequent foreign economic and trade exchanges in China, has signed a great number of construction projects with ICEs. Every year millions of engineers and labors heading for Africa. However, the serious condition of frequent accident in labor personnel safety needs close attention as construction industry has been universally regarded as one of the most dangerous industries in the world. Therefore, this paper identified the personnel security risks faced by ICEs staff in Africa to illuminating the importance and urgency of overseas labor safety issues. Mixed methods are utilized to analysis risk events and risk factors. Finally, this paper identified three risk events(armed conflict event, criminal crime event, disease and accidental injury event) from case study and 36 risk factors are from politics, economy, society and culture, natural environment, contractor enterprises and engineering personnel themselves.