China remains Africa’s top trading partner for 9 consecutive years

China has been Africa’s largest trading partner for nine consecutive years, with major cooperation programs boosting bilateral trade, according to official data released on Tuesday.

China-Africa trade has grown strongly since the launch of 10 major cooperation plans three years ago. In the first half of 2018, bilateral trade grew 16 per cent year-over-year to $ 98.8 billion, Qian Keming, vice minister of commerce, told a press conference.

China announced 10 major China-Africa cooperation projects at the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2015 and many of them were targeted at economic and trade cooperation.

Qian said that all economic and trade cooperation plans have been implemented so far and that some of them have “yielded very good results”.

Over the past three years, China’s average direct investment in Africa has been about $ 3 billion, while industrial cooperation has been growing in sectors such as manufacturing, finance, tourism and manufacturing, and aviation.

Africa’s infrastructure is improving thanks to these cooperation plans, which are expected to bring the continent 30,000-km of highways, 85-million-tonnes per year of harbor capacity, more than 9 million tonnes per day of infrastructure. water purification and approximately 20,000 megawatts of electricity generation capacity and creation of 900,000 jobs.

The 2018 Beijing summit of FOCAC is scheduled for September 3-4. The theme of the summit will be “China and Africa: towards an even stronger community with a shared future through win-win cooperation.”