Trade: China opens its market wide to 53 African countries without customs duties
Since May 1, 2026, African exports have benefited from duty-free access to the Chinese market. The measure concerns 53 countries on the continent and will extend until April 30, 2028, marking a major turning point in Sino-African economic relations.
Announced in February by Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, this initiative however excludes Eswatini, due to its diplomatic relations with Taiwan, with Beijing conditioning access to this preferential regime on recognition of the one-China principle.
This decision expands a system launched in December 2024, initially limited to 33 least developed countries. Now major economies like Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, South Africa and Kenya are also affected.
Trade between China and Africa reached $348 billion in 2025, including $110 billion in Chinese imports. A dynamic that is growing sharply, with $92 billion in trade recorded in the first quarter of 2026, an increase of around 27%.
Despite this growth, the trade imbalance persists. Africa is running a record deficit of $102 billion, with its exports remaining largely dominated by raw materials, including oil, minerals, cocoa and timber.
This opening of the Chinese market comes in an international context marked by a tightening of American trade policy under the administration of Donald Trump. Since April 2025, the United States has introduced new customs duties on the majority of its partners, while AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act), which provided preferential access to African products since 2000, expired in September 2025 without renewal.
By positioning itself in this way, Beijing becomes the first major power to offer such broad and unilateral tariff access to the African continent. However, the concrete benefits will depend on several structural challenges, notably logistics costs, low industrial processing and compliance with the health standards required by the Chinese market.
Some countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Morocco have already initiated strategies to take advantage of this opportunity, particularly in the agricultural and agro-industrial sectors.
