China's Free-Trade Offer to Africa Won't Solve Trade Imbalance: Expert Analysis

Read The Diplomat, Know The Asia-Pacific Beijing has opened its enormous market to African exports. Whether that helps the continent move up global value chains is another question. In Abuja on August 14, 2026, nearly 500 government officials, diplomats, scholars, and business representatives gathered for a seminar on China’s new zero-tariff policy and what it means for African economic transformation. Nigeria’s minister of state for agriculture, Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, used the occasion to strike a cautious note. “Zero tariffs alone do not guarantee success,” he told the room. “The question before us, therefore, is not, can Nigeria export more? The question should be, can Nigeria export better?” Since May 1, China has extended zero-tariff treatment across 100 percent of tariff lines to the 53 African countries with which it holds diplomatic relations. That gives nearly all of Africa (with the lone exception of Eswatini) duty-free access to one of the world’s largest consumer markets. The early results look encouraging: Chinese imports from Africa reached $28.7 billion in May and June, up 23.5 percent from a year earlier. During the seminar in Abuja, China’s ambassador to Nigeria reported that Chinese imports from Nigeria specifically had already grown more than 40 percent year-on-year in both May and June. African governments have good reason to welcome China’s new zero-tariff policy. The problem is that lower tariffs alone cannot resolve the deeper imbalance that has built up in Africa-China trade. Africa-China merchandise trade hit a record $348 billion in 2025, but the flows were badly lopsided. China sold Africa $225 billion in goods, Africa sold China $123 billion. For every dollar of goods Africa sold China, it bought back roughly $1.83. The resulting deficit, $102 billion, was 64.5 percent above 2024’s figure. In the same period, Chinese exports to Africa grew 25.8 percent, while African exports to China grew just 5.4 percent. Market access – like China’s new offer to African countries – can change the volume of trade, but not necessarily the structure of trade. What is actually being exported by each partner matters more than the size of the deficit itself. Research from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center and the African Economic Research Consortium found that from 2000 through 2022, 89 percent of African exports to China came from extractive industries: oil, copper, iron ore, alumina. Over the same period, 94 percent of African imports from China were manufactured goods. A 2026 update from the same researchers showed that not much had changed. Extracted natural resources still dominate Africa’s exports to China, while agriculture and manufacturing each account for a small share of export value. Most African countries have clearly stated ambitions to move up the value chain. Lower tariffs alone will do little to accomplish that goal. The rising volume of Africa-China trade is easy to measure and just as easy to celebrate, but the overall numbers are less important than the composition of trade. The tariff opening still matters, of course. African exports of avocados, apples, and oranges to China have risen sharply since implementation. Market access of this kind can pull real investment toward certification, cold-chain logistics, and packaging, some of the obstacles holding producers back. But that won’t happen automatically. Take copper as an example. Copper can be exported from Africa as raw ore, or it can be refined and worked into components before it ships. Currently, that work – and the added value – happens almost entirely outside the continent. China’s zero-tariff policy doesn’t care whether the copper is raw or refined; the tariff line is the same either way. Two recent examples show what greater processing and value capture inside Africa can actually look like. At a processing plant in Kenya’s Athi River Export Processing Zone, locally grown avocados are ripened, sorted, and cold-pressed into extra virgin avocado oil bound for China. In Rwanda, a company that began exporting dried chilies to China in 2022 shipped its first batch of pickled chilies in June – a deliberate move toward a higher-value semi-processed product made only after the tariff change. In both cases, more processing is happening before the goods leave the continent, which means more of the value is captured in Kenya and Rwanda rather than downstream in China. African countries do have the capability to move up the value chain, and intra-Africa trade proves it. UNCTAD reported that 61 percent of trade happening within the continent consists of processed and semi-processed goods, far above Africa’s share of processed exports to the rest of the world. The opportunity is to pair China’s external market with the regional value chains the African Continental Free Trade Area is meant to build. Cotton grown in Mali or Burkina Faso can be baled and shipped directly to China for processing, or it can move first through mills in Cote d’Ivoire or Ghana and leave as finished cloth. It’s not tariffs that are holding back African manufacturing. China’s zero-tariff policy won’t solve problems like unreliable electricity, expensive financing, inefficient ports, thin transport links, certification bottlenecks, or customs delays. UNCTAD estimated that road transport alone accounts for about 29 percent of the price of goods traded within Africa, compared with 7 percent for goods traded beyond it. According to UNCTAD, non-tariff barriers constrain intra-African trade roughly three times more than tariffs. African governments need to treat China’s opening as one input into a larger industrial policy, not as a substitute for having one. Africa-China trade will likely keep setting records, but that alone won’t help African economies climb global value chains. The real test will show up in the breakdown of those trade statistics: whether Africa is still mostly exporting raw materials like crude oil and copper ore or refined metals and finished goods. Subscribe today and join thousands of diplomats, analysts, policy professionals and business readers who rely on The Diplomat for expert Asia-Pacific coverage. Get unlimited access to in-depth analysis you won't find anywhere else, from South China Sea tensions to ASEAN diplomacy to India-Pakistan relations. More than 5,000 articles a year. Already have an account? Log in. Matthew J. Rochat is a visiting assistant professor of political science at the University of North Dakota. His research focuses on Africa-China relations, international political economy, and maritime infrastructure. 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