Reports have shown that Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt are China’s top trade destinations, with exports jumping by 25% year-on-year to reach $122 billion so far in 2025.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Africa’s demand for Chinese products surged this year, already surpassing the continent’s entire 2020 trade volume with China and on course to top $200 billion for the first time.
Construction machinery ranked among China’s fastest-growing exports to Africa in the first seven months of 2025, surging 63% year-on-year.
According to Bloomberg, shipments of passenger cars more than doubled, while steel product exports rose in high double digits. African nations have also stepped up imports of Chinese solar panels, which climbed 60% in the 12 months through June, according to climate think tank Ember.
On the other hand, however, Africa’s share of China’s total exports is still meagre at about 6%, roughly half the level for the United States.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), China emerged as Nigeria’s largest source of imports in the first quarter of 2025. The country exported ₦4.66 trillion to Nigeria during the period, down from ₦14.14 trillion in Q4 2024. Its current Share of Total Imports stood at 30.19%.
The shift is being fueled by the escalating US–China trade war, which has pushed Chinese firms to seek new outlets for their goods.
The report noted that President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, laid the foundation for the boom, as Chinese companies continue winning contracts for large-scale projects across the continent.
Some goods destined for the US are possibly being diverted through Africa, the report quoted Gavekal’s Beddor, a tactic known as transshipment.
Rising protectionism in Washington has given an extra incentive for Africa to buy from Beijing. Several 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 signed $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.
The deal is five times the amount during the same period last year and the most among all regions included in Xi’s infrastructure initiative, according to Bloomberg.And in a counterpoint to Trump, Xi said in June that China was 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 the number of African countries with access to China’s market to 19.
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.
