Containers stacked on a dock at the Port of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa.
(Bloomberg) — Africa has become a new hotspot for Chinese exports as Donald Trump’s tariffs redraw trade for the world’s biggest manufacturing nation.
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With a 25% on-year jump to $122 billion, growth in sales to the continent of 1.5 billion people has far outpaced other major markets this year while orders from the US slumped. China’s exports to Africa so far in 2025 are more than in the whole of 2020 and on track to exceed $200 billion for the first time.
Although the trading relationship shows no sign of becoming less lopsided, with China running a far wider surplus with Africa than last year, Beijing is cracking open its domestic market while seizing on the chance to meet the continent’s infrastructure needs.
“Chinese exporters have done a genuinely impressive job of diversifying into emerging markets in recent years, including in Africa,” said Christopher Beddor, deputy China research director at Gavekal Dragonomics. “The weaker yuan this year has probably also made Chinese exports more competitive in African countries.”
The trade war has supercharged a boom that was years in the making, spearheaded by President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative unveiled in 2013. And as Chinese companies snapped up contracts to build everything from railways to industrial parks across the continent, the demand for the machinery and materials to complete these projects followed this year.
Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt are the biggest African buyers of Chinese products. Construction machinery was among China’s fastest growing exports to Africa in the first seven months, surging 63% year on year.
Shipments of passenger cars more than doubled from a year earlier and some steel products expanded in high double digits. At the same time, Africa’s share of China’s total exports remains modest at about 6%, roughly half the level for the US.
Some goods destined for the US are possibly being diverted through Africa, according to Gavekal’s Beddor, a tactic known as transshipment.
Rising protectionism in Washington has given extra incentive for Africa to buy from Beijing. A number of goods from more than 30 nations on the continent that had duty-free access to American markets granted under the African Growth and Opportunity Act are now being subjected to a range of tariffs by the Trump administration.
In the first half of 2025 alone, Africa inked $30.5 billion in construction contracts with China, according to a July report from Griffith University in Australia and the Green Finance & Development Center, founded at Shanghai-based Fudan University. That’s five times the amount during the same period last year and the most among all regions included in Xi’s infrastructure initiative.
And in a counterpoint to Trump, Xi said in June that China is removing levies on imports from all African nations with which it has diplomatic ties.
During the same month, the government in Beijing allowed imports of agricultural products from Ethiopia, Congo, Gambia, and Malawi, bringing to 19 the number of African countries with access to China’s market.
In Africa, China could bring know-how and its vast industrial machine to a continent struggling with costly logistics and held back by its patchy infrastructure, with less than half of the population having reliable electricity access.
African nations have been ordering more solar panels from China, with imports of the clean-energy technology surging 60% in the 12 months through June, according to climate think tank Ember. Over the last two years, purchases of Chinese solar panels to the continent beyond South Africa have tripled, Ember said in a report this week.
“Energy resources remain unevenly distributed in Africa, with some nations heavily reliant on imports” like oil, said Zhou Mi, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, a think tank under the Ministry of Commerce.
“Alternatives offered by China, such as solar and wind power as well as electric cars, can help African countries overcome energy bottlenecks, prompting them to increase imports from the country in pursuit of energy independence and economic development,” he said.
Affordability is another factor working in China’s favor. Despite higher demand, prices for 14 out of the 18 major Chinese goods shipped to Africa actually fell on a yearly basis in the January-July period, with transformers and converters posting the deepest decline of 39%.
China is also bringing financial muscle to the continent with the world’s fastest-growing population, often in the form of backing from state-owned banks. Only in recent months, China Development Bank released a 245 million-euro ($286 million) first tranche of funding for a railway project in Nigeria and extended a loan for infrastructure construction in Egypt.
Although most of the commodities imported from Africa to China are priced in dollars, the expanding trade footprint will probably help the yuan make inroads in corporate and government balance sheets.
Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt are among the four countries on the continent that already have bilateral currency swaps with the central bank in Beijing — a list that includes Mauritius. Kenya has announced it’s in talks to convert some dollar-denominated loans to yuan to help ease the strain of debt.
“China obviously benefits from greater use of its currency in the financial system – so that’s the incentive to offer preferential terms if they swap currency debt,” said David Omojomolo, Africa economist at Capital Economics. “I do expect heavily exposed countries to China in terms of debt like Angola will perhaps follow Kenya’s lead on this yuan swap if it’s pulled off.”
Chinese goods barred or resisted elsewhere are meanwhile receiving little pushback in Africa. Exports of steel and iron components — used to build bridges, towers and scaffolding — climbed 43%.
Sales of batteries spiked 41%, and transformers and converters, including inverters that adapt electricity from solar panels and wind systems to power home appliances and industrial equipment, soared nearly 25%.
For now, China has yet to encounter the kind of backlash seen from countries around the world that fear the flood of cheaper goods. But it’s a risk in a region already worried about falling further into debt to China, especially if the exports begin to crowd out local producers.
But Beijing will tread carefully since the continent is critical as a source of key commodities and a growth market for its companies. What’s more, it’s become a central arena for China’s aspirations on the world stage.
“Africa is where China takes its firms and brands global — they get experience, create markets, and win brand recognition,” said Lauren Johnston, a China-Africa expert of New South Economics, a consultancy in Melbourne. “It is important for China’s global development leadership push.”
–With assistance from Qizi Sun, James Mayger and Paul Burkhardt.
(Updates with report on solar panel imports in 14th paragraph.)
