Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt have emerged as China’s top African trade destinations, with exports rising 25% year-on-year to reach $122 billion so far in 2025.
Bloomberg reported that African demand for Chinese goods has surged this year, already surpassing the continent’s entire 2020 trade volume and on track to exceed $200 billion for the first time.
Construction machinery was among China’s fastest-growing exports to Africa in the first seven months of 2025, climbing 63% year-on-year. Shipments of passenger cars more than doubled, steel exports recorded high double-digit growth, and imports of Chinese solar panels rose 60% in the 12 months to June, according to climate think tank Ember.
Despite the boom, Africa’s share of China’s total exports remains modest at about 6%, roughly half that of the United States.
Nigeria has emerged as China’s largest African partner. According to Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), China supplied ₦4.66 trillion worth of goods in the first quarter of 2025, representing 30.19% of Nigeria’s imports, though this was down from ₦14.14 trillion in the final quarter of 2024.
Analysts attribute the surge partly to the U.S.–China trade war, which has pushed Chinese exporters to seek new markets. Many goods originally bound for the United States are believed to be rerouted through Africa, a practice known as transshipment.
President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013, has underpinned this expansion as Chinese firms secure contracts for major projects across the continent. In the first half of 2025, African countries signed $30.5 billion worth of construction contracts with China—five times more than the same period last year and the largest share among all Belt and Road regions, according to research by Griffith University and Fudan University’s Green Finance & Development Centre.
Xi further deepened ties in June by removing tariffs on imports from all African nations with which China maintains diplomatic relations. That same month, Beijing authorised imports of agricultural goods from Ethiopia, Congo, Gambia and Malawi, raising to 19 the number of African countries with access to the Chinese market.
Rising U.S. protectionism, which has reduced Africa’s preferential access to American markets under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, has also provided Africa with added incentive to turn to Beijing.
China, with its industrial capacity and expertise, is positioning itself as a partner to a continent still hampered by high logistics costs and weak infrastructure, including unreliable electricity access for nearly half its population. Solar panels remain in especially high demand, with imports from China jumping 60% in the past year.