Economics – Trade & AfCFTA · Editorial

By Moakanyi Magazine · China-in-Africa · June 2026

On paper, the African exporter now walks through an open gate. Since 1 December 2024, according to China's foreign ministry, zero-tariff treatment on 100 percent of tariff lines applies to all least-developed countries that hold diplomatic relations with Beijing – most of the African continent. Yet a dropped tariff is not the same as a sold container. The gate is open; the shelves behind it still demand paperwork, cold chains and a registered enterprise. The distance between the two is where market-entry strategy actually lives.

The headline: a market opened, on China's terms

The zero-tariff measure is real and broad, and it sits alongside a record trade figure. China says 2024 China-Africa trade reached US$295.6 billion, a fresh high, with the first quarter of 2025 adding US$72.6 billion, up 2.7 percent year on year. Beijing also reports extending financial support of RMB 130.32 billion (about US$18 billion) and insurance coverage of RMB 139.95 billion to the African side.

The framing is generous. The structure is asymmetric. The access is granted rather than negotiated, and a measure granted by one side can in principle be narrowed or conditioned by that same side. African exporters are building businesses on a concession, not a reciprocal treaty obligation – a distinction that matters when planning a decade of investment around it. The contrast with the African Continental Free Trade Area is instructive: that arrangement is mutual and rule-bound, whereas zero-tariff access to China rests on a unilateral pledge that no African signature secures.

Tariff-free entry is a genuine opening, but one held open by the larger partner rather than locked in by treaty.

The catch: protocols, not tariffs, are the real border

The binding constraint for African farmers is rarely the tariff. It is sanitary and phytosanitary approval – the protocol that certifies a specific crop from a specific country as safe for the Chinese market. Beijing reports it has signed 22 protocols on agricultural exports with 18 African nations, and that more than 2,400 food enterprises from 53 African countries have registered to sell into China. That registration queue is where most produce still waits. The mismatch is stark: 53 countries have enterprises in the system, yet only 18 hold the export protocols that turn registration into actual shipments, which means a large share of the continent has presence on paper without the certification that lets a container clear customs in Shanghai.

These protocols are granular and slow. A protocol covering Kenyan avocados does not cover Kenyan mangoes, nor Tanzanian avocados; each new product and origin reopens a technical negotiation over pests, residues and inspection. Recent quarantine memorandums with Zimbabwe, the Republic of the Congo and Sao Tome and Principe show the process advancing one line item at a time, not in a single sweep.

A protocol signed for one crop in one country does not travel; each new product reopens the negotiation.

The catch within the catch: a deepening trade imbalance

Tariff cuts also work in both directions of attention. China-Africa trade reached a record while remaining lopsided in composition: African exports skew toward minerals, oil and unprocessed agricultural goods, while imports from China are manufactured. Zero-tariff access to the Chinese consumer market is meant partly to widen the African export basket beyond raw commodities, but a tariff line removed does not by itself create a processing industry or a brand.

The risk is that the headline opening entrenches the existing pattern – more raw produce flowing east, more finished goods flowing back – unless African producers move up the value chain. The framework agreements on economic partnership that Beijing says it has signed with more than 20 African states will be judged on whether they shift that mix, not merely on whether trade grows. The scale of the asymmetry sharpens the point: at US$295.6 billion in 2024, China-Africa trade is now larger than most African economies, and the financial support and insurance cover Beijing reports – RMB 130.32 billion (about US$18 billion) and RMB 139.95 billion respectively – flow through Chinese institutions on Chinese terms. An opening this large can pull an export sector upward or lock it into a single dependent relationship, and the zero-tariff measure alone does not decide which.

More trade is not the same as better trade if the basket stays raw on one side and finished on the other.

The so-what: access rewards the already-ready

Zero tariffs lower the price of entry for exporters who already meet Chinese standards – large, certified, cold-chain-equipped operations that can clear the protocol queue. Smallholders without registration gain little in the immediate term. The measure is best read as an invitation to upgrade, with the substantial cost of that upgrade – testing, certification, logistics – borne largely by the African side. The states that capture the most will be those that invest public money in helping their producers qualify, rather than those that simply celebrate the announcement.

The open gate favours those who can already afford the journey through it.

Sources: China MFA, FOCAC Beijing Action Plan 2025-2027