Monday, September 8, Beijing raised the veil on its figures: since the start of 2025, China has garnered almost 50 billion dollars in trade in Africa, almost the total of 2024. Until the end of August, more than $ 117 billion in goods and services took the road to the continent, while only 67 billion were doing the opposite journey. The rocking is as geographic as it is political: in August, Chinese exports to the United States won by 33 %, when those bound for Africa leaping by 26 %. What Washington pushes, Africa takes it.
60 % increase in imports from Chinese solar panels in Africa
For the past two years, Chinese manufacturers have changed their compass. Rather than facing the American surcharge, they have opened corridors to the markets that remain accessible: Africa, but also Southeast Asia and Latin America. On the continent, the push is visible sector by sector. In energy first: worn by prices in free fall, solar panels from China have seen their imports in Africa climb about 60 % in twelve months, with twenty countries at record levels according to Ember, a sector monitoring organization. Key: mini-networks that flourish and warehouse roofs.
Then in industry: out of the first five months of 2025, steel deliveries to Africa have swelled by almost 30 %. The machines for agriculture, building or shipbuilding display all 40 % increase. Electric engines and generators exceed 50 % increase. African channels, from Accra to Addis Ababa, turn faster because inputs arrive in larger quantities and cheaper.
A “new” horizon built on old investments
For more than a decade, the initiative of “new silk routes” has been upholstered: highways, railways, bridges and ports designed, funded and often built by Chinese companies. These projects, criticized or praised according to the capitals, have a tangible effect: they shorten the deadlines, reduce logistical costs and open up to now landlocked. In return, they cement the influence of Beijing and give it more direct access to the raw materials of which its downstream sectors are friands.
Commercial policy follows geopolitics. In June, China announced an almost total lifting of customs duties for 53 African countries. In other words, one more highway for its exporters. Beijing also praises its “social imprint”: more than a million jobs created in three years, and a quarter of a century of roads, railways, bridges delivered and built from Dakar to Djibouti, recalls Xinhua, its main press agency.
The reality is more contrasted on the manufacturers’ side: if China dominates the solar sector, it faces a rough competition which forces it to reduce its margins. In Africa, these broken prices have concrete consequences: photovoltaic electricity explodes on the continent.
Faced with this deployment, the United States seems to be behind. The cuts in foreign aid to Africa and the extension of customs duties (even on certain African products) leave a space in which China rushes. In Lagos or Nairobi business circles, a very pragmatic relationship is described: fast funding, short deadlines, equipment delivered and installed turnkey. There remains a real question for Africa: how to transform this windfall into industrial power and energy sovereignty, without installing a low cost dependence from which it would be much more difficult to get out of?
