This is an opinion pieve based on a lecture held by Nardos Bekele-Thomas, CEO of AUDA-NEPAD, the African Union Development Agency.
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The numbers tell one story. In 2025, China–Africa trade reached a record $348 billion, with Chinese exports to Africa rising to $225 billion and African exports to China reaching $123 billion. By any measure, this is a relationship of enormous scale — and one that has expanded dramatically over the past two decades.
But there is another story running alongside the headline figures, and it is less comfortable. “The deficit remains overwhelmingly on the African side,” Bekele-Thomas told the gathering, “and the structure of trade is still defined far more by raw material flows than by African industrial depth.”
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“The issue before us is no longer whether Africa trades with China. It clearly does — and at scale. The real issue is how Africa trades with China, in what form, at what level of value, and with what developmental outcome.”
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The immediate backdrop to her remarks was China’s announcement that from 1 May 2026, it will implement zero-tariff treatment for imports from the 53 African countries with which it has diplomatic relations. Politically, the move carries real weight. At a time when much of the global trading system is moving in the opposite direction.
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But she was equally clear about what tariff preferences, on their own, can and cannot achieve. “Tariff preferences, by themselves, do not industrialise economies. They lower one barrier. They do not build production systems. They do not finance enterprise growth. They do not fix logistics. They do not create standards capacity.”
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[Even before China's announcement] around 70 percent of African exports to China were entering duty-free, with another 22 percent facing tariffs below five percent. “That tells us something very important,” she said. “The central constraint has never been tariffs alone. The deeper constraint has been productive readiness — the ability to produce at scale, meet standards consistently, finance orders, move goods competitively, and supply markets with reliability.”
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Where Bekele-Thomas centred much of her argument was on the composition of trade rather than its overall size. “If Africa continues to send crude oil, copper, cobalt and iron ore into the Chinese market while importing machinery, electronics, solar equipment and other higher-value goods,” she cautioned, “then zero tariffs will alter the margin of trade without changing its structure.”
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Critically, she argued this cannot be achieved in pieces. “No single African economy, acting alone, will maximise this opening across multiple sectors at the scale required.” Regional production systems, corridor-based value chains, and the architecture of the AfCFTA offer the more realistic path. By 2035, the AfCFTA could increase Africa’s total exports by almost 29 percent, raise intra-African exports by more than 81 percent, and grow exports to non-African countries by 19 percent. “Africa will not build durable export competitiveness for China — or for any other major market — without first building stronger regional value chains, larger integrated production systems, and more efficient continental logistics.”
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Bekele-Thomas outlined three shifts she believes are essential if this moment is to translate into lasting transformation.
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The first is moving from fragmented national responses to a coordinated African strategy. “The risk before us is not only that Africa may move too slowly. It is that Africa may move in pieces.” A market opening of this scale, she argued, “cannot be approached through 53 disconnected export pushes, 53 separate market signals, and 53 competing attempts to secure the same buyers, the same quota space, and the same investment flows. That would not strengthen Africa’s position. It would weaken it.” What is needed instead is “a common African commercial logic: shared market intelligence, disciplined quota monitoring, aligned engagement with Chinese institutions, and a continental view of where our competitive strengths truly lie.” ...
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The second shift is from raw material dependence to value-added regional production. “The central weakness in Africa–China trade is not that Africa is absent from the relationship. It is that Africa is still positioned too low within it.” The task, as she framed it, is to change the composition of trade, not merely its scale. “We must move with intention into processing, beneficiation, agro-processing and light manufacturing. We must retain more value before export.” And no single economy, she stressed, will do this at scale on its own. “But regional production systems can. Corridor-based value chains can. The AfCFTA can.” The answer, she said, is “not a collection of isolated national export plans, but a continental production strategy in which countries specialise, complement one another, and build a common African offer with real industrial depth.”
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The third shift is from tariff access alone to what she called full-spectrum trade enablement. “The real barriers now are not only at the border. They lie in standards, certification, traceability, logistics, working capital, regulatory approval and institutional readiness. Market access on paper is not the same as market access in practice.” A zero tariff, she noted, “does not move a shipment through a weak corridor. It does not certify a facility. It does not finance an SME. It does not satisfy SPS requirements. It does not secure GACC registration. And it does not build trust with buyers who need quality, consistency and reliability.” The next frontier, she argued, is implementation — “quality infrastructure, accredited laboratories, inspection systems, facility registration, export readiness, trade finance and real-time market information.”
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Larger volumes flowing through an unchanged trade structure can look like progress. But if Africa continues to export primary commodities into a tariff-free Chinese market while importing finished goods in return, the margin of trade will have changed while its character has not. “We will simply move larger volumes through an old structure of dependency,” she warned, “and mistake that movement for progress.”
“If Africa gets these three shifts right,” she argued, “then China’s tariff-free offer will not be remembered merely as a policy announcement or a trade concession. It will be remembered as a strategic inflection point — the moment Africa chose to organise itself differently, to produce more ambitiously, and to compete from a stronger place in the world.”
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