China in Africa: June 2025
Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Follow-Up Meeting: From June 10 to 12, the Ministerial Meeting of Coordinators on the Implementation of the Follow-Up Actions of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) was held in Changsha, the capital of central China’s Hunan Province. China and participating African countries conducted a review of the follow-up actions’ implementation since the September 2024 FOCAC summit in Beijing and consulted on future plans. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with many of his African counterparts throughout the three-day event, including from Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Namibia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tanzania, and Uganda. Beyond adherence to the One China principle, conversations were grounded in mutually beneficial cooperation, the alignment of economic development strategies, and opportunities for increased Chinese investment in infrastructure and manufacturing through the broader Belt and Road Initiative. Bakhta Selma Mansouri, Algeria’s secretary of state for African affairs to the minister of foreign affairs, highlighted the importance of establishing monitoring and assessment mechanisms during the implementation of the September 2024 FOCAC summit commitments, especially with respect to major initiatives.
The meeting concluded with the adoption of the China-Africa Changsha Declaration on Upholding Solidarity and Cooperation of the Global South, calling for stronger multilateralism, enhanced development assistance to Africa, greater trade facilitation, and increased cooperation in areas such as green development, the digital economy, science and technology, and the rule of law.
China to Remove Continent-Wide Tariffs: During the meeting, China announced its plans to drop the tariffs it currently imposes on all fifty-three African countries with which it has diplomatic relations, excluding Eswatini, which recognizes Taiwan as a country. The zero-tariff move, when implemented, will extend the 2024 deal through which China removed tariffs on goods from the thirty-three least developed countries (LDCs) in Africa, with the expanded list to include some of China’s largest trading partners on the continent, such as Nigeria and South Africa. Baboucarr Ousmaila Joof, the Gambia’s trade minister, remarked on the unlocked potential of trade expansion between China and Africa. From raw materials to value-added products, the Gambia and other LDCs will have direct access to the second-largest consumer market globally. In his view, the trade expansion offers a counterbalance to protectionist, restrictive, and unsustainable Western policies.
Fourth Annual China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo: Directly following the Ministerial Meeting of Coordinators on the Implementation of the Follow-Up Actions of FOCAC was the fourth annual China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo (CAETE), also held in Changsha, from June 12 to 15. Established at the 2018 FOCAC summit in Beijing, CAETE has become a platform for promoting China-Africa economic and trade ties and plays a central role in advancing FOCAC’s trade and development priorities. Approximately 4,700 Chinese and African companies, as well as over 30,000 participants, attended the four-day event, the theme of which was “China and Africa: Together Toward Modernization.” Organizers indicated that the cooperation projects’ preliminarily agreed-upon value exceeded $11 billion. Notable attendants included Ugandan Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja, Liberian Vice President Jeremiah Kpan Koung, and Kenyan Prime Cabinet Secretary and Cabinet Secretary for Foreign and Diaspora Affairs Musalia Mudavadi. CAETE 2025 was rooted in South-South cooperation, with the China-Africa Business Council organizing a special exhibition on the matter.
South Africa participated as the guest country of honor at the event, handled in partnership with Brand South Africa; the Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition; the South Africa International E-commerce Association; and the Gauteng Provincial Government. As the honored country, South Africa anchored a showcase that included a 250-square-meter National Pavilion, presenting the country’s investment case through immersive digital experiences, product exhibitions, and business-to-business matchmaking opportunities; a delegation of twenty South African small- and medium-sized enterprises across agro-processing, beverages, cosmetics, and textiles seeking to enter China through e-commerce platforms; and a series of high-level dialogues between government officials and private-sector leaders.
Several of the agreed-upon protocols accounted for the export of raw materials from African countries to China, but not processed products—leading African countries to grasp at further investment from Chinese businesses in the value-addition processes of their commodities. One case in point is Malawi, where China has opened its doors to raw macadamia but not finished macadamia products, which could improve macadamia’s (and other commodities’) export competitiveness and increase market returns, according to Malawian Minister of Trade and Industry Vitumbiko A.Z. Mumba.
Sustainability: Green energy development was a focus at the event, with deals made between Chinese and African companies in photovoltaics and electric vehicles and conversations held on collaboration in agriculture. Lejone Mpotjoane, Lesotho’s minister of foreign affairs and international relations, called attention to CAETE as a valuable platform for attracting Chinese investment and know-how as it transforms its agriculture sector, including through targeted support in climate-smart agriculture, advanced irrigation systems, and technical capacity-building for government institutions and local farmers. Madagascar’s delegation highlighted similar concerns. China and Democratic Republic of Congo signed a memorandum of understanding to expand cooperation in agriculture, with provisions such as sharing technical knowledge, developing trade channels for exporting Congolese products, and supporting agricultural research through partnership with Chinese institutions.
Infrastructure Investment Abounds: Chinese state-owned enterprises continued to invest heavily in infrastructure across the continent, largely in North Africa. In Algeria, the group Jingdong Steel announced its plans to invest $500 million in a new steel plant in the Draa Lhaja industrial zone, aiming to use 80 percent local materials to produce five hundred thousand tons of steel sheets and pipes for the building and public-works sector and create three thousand jobs. Half the output is intended to serve the Algerian market, while the rest will be exported. China State Construction Engineering Corporation continues to construct Egypt’s New Administrative Capital near Cairo—a $3.8 billion project that will reportedly house more than six million people when complete. Chinese chemical giant Tinci Materials signed a $2.8 billion deal with the Moroccan government to build a large-scale facility for lithium-ion battery electrolytes in the Jorf Lasfar industrial zone, expecting to produce one hundred fifty tons annually of finished products for the global battery market. Deepened collaboration is being explored between Mahmoud al-Farjani, executive director of Libya’s National Development Agency and the chairman and general manager of Libya’s Sirte Free Zone Authority, and China Harbour Engineering Company, which has expressed interest in investing in port operations and development, constructing solar farms south of the Sirte Free Zone, and building an airport in the zone’s hinterland.
Mid-month, President of the African Development Bank Akinwumi Adesina commended several Chinese firms on their progress on two major infrastructure projects in Tanzania’s capital city, Dodoma: the Msalato International Airport and the Dodoma City Outer Ring Road project, a 112.3-kilometer dual carriageway. In Gabon, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Michel Régis Onanga Ndiaye commented on China’s commitment to buttressing Gabonese diplomacy, as the two parties penned an agreement to construct the Foreign Affairs Hotel on the traditional site of the Boulevard du Bord de Mer.
Mining Oil and Gas: Following repeated attacks on oil infrastructure and export routes that halted operations in May, South Sudan is reportedly partnering with China’s state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to revive its oil sector. Deng Lual Wol, undersecretary of the South Sudanese Ministry of Petroleum, announced that the ministry and CNPC agreed on a technical cooperation plan, which includes establishing a joint technical committee to overcome operational and logistical challenges and increasing production at oil blocks 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7, which are South Sudan’s primary production areas. A large focus will be placed on restoring infrastructure in the Unity, Ruweng, and Upper Nile regions, where intercommunal violence has degraded facilities.
China’s Zhongman Petroleum and Natural Gas Group (ZPEC) revealed that it won a tender to explore and develop a natural-gas block in the southern part of Algeria’s Gourara-Timimoun basin under a production-sharing contract. ZPEC outbid France-based TotalEnergies and a consortium of Italy’s Eni and Norway’s Equinor for the thirty-eight-thousand-kilometer Zerafa II block.
Chinese Medical Assistance in Africa: June saw considerable cooperation between China and a number of African countries in the health sector. At the beginning of the month, with the help of the Heilongjiang Provincial Hospital in China, the John F. Kennedy Center inaugurated Liberia’s first-ever cardiology unit. The unit fell within a China-Africa health cooperation framework announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the seventy-third World Health Assembly.
Several batches of Chinese medical teams conducted free medical outreach and provided free services to hundreds of patients in Botswana, Mozambique, and Sierra Leone. The twenty-sixth Chinese medical team also collaborated with China Railway Seventh Group Co., Ltd., to educate both Chinese and local staff about preventing the mpox virus; Sierra Leone is currently experiencing a Clade II mpox outbreak, with active transmission reported across multiple districts. New batches of Chinese medical teams were sent to Angola and Madagascar, where they will collaborate with local health professionals to promote research and academic exchange, provide training, and offer free consultations and specialty development.
African Pushback Against China: Algeria has reportedly decided not to partner with China in the constructing of the Port of El Hamdania, a flagship project launched in 2015 under former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to rival Morocco’s Tangier-Med Port. The French shipping giant Compagnie Maritime d’Affrètement (CMA) and Compagnie Générale Maritime (CGM), commonly known as CMA CGM, has emerged as a likely candidate to take over the project.
