Business
China’s trade with Africa at record high
China’s exports are a smaller proportion of this US$200 billion trade than its imports. Africa offers markets, but smaller and contained ones, for Chinese-manufactured consumables: textiles, clothing, blankets, inexpensive footwear, headgear, toys, telecoms equipment and affordable cell phones, furniture, caskets, computers, and televisions. To governments, China also sells jet fighters, military equipment and ammunition, military uniforms, heavy communications technology, agricultural implements, road machinery, and turbines and generators. This month China even shipped patrol vessels to Nigeria capable of carrying helicopters and defending the Nigerian offshore oil fields against pirates.
To Africa, China sends tourists, too, consultants, project laborers and supervisors, and diplomats – all of whom bulk up the trade statistics. This month, a single Chinese province is sending a large team of investors to Zambia to seek new opportunities to sell Chinese manufacturers and grow tourism. In 2011, in addition to countries such as South Africa, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the major importers of Chinese goods were Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, and Liberia.
Few African countries have failed to benefit from China’s willingness to build dams, hydroelectric facilities, and thermal power plants; construct roads; erect stadia, hospitals, and party headquarters; renovate railways; refurbish ports; and upgrade mining projects. All of these various activities help boost the trade numbers.
The top 10 beneficiaries of China’s assistance and expanded concessionary loans (components of the great rise in two-way trade) are: Ghana (US$11.4 billion); Nigeria (US$8.4 billion); the Sudan (including South Sudan) and Ethiopia (both US$5.4 billion); Mauritania (US$4.6 billion); Angola (US$4.2 billion); Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe (both US$3.8 billion); Cameroon (US$3 billion), and South Africa (US$2.3 billion).
The figures above are from 2000-2011 and do not include more recent ventures, especially those in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
As Chinese President Xi Jinping told Senegal President Macky Sall in Beijing late last month, China and Africa are completely intertwined and interdependent as far as trade goes. Almost no African country is without its Chinese trade component, even those with Taiwanese ties, and almost every African country hosts Chinese diplomats, builders, and entrepreneurs.
Re-published from Africa and Asia: The Key Issues
