China-Africa cooperation: The living laboratory BRICS+ cannot afford to ignore

Africa does not have a shortage of natural resources, foreign investors or development conferences. What it has lacked for decades is the industrial capacity to turn its enormous resource wealth into high-value products, well-paid jobs and globally competitive companies. The real test of China-Africa cooperation, therefore, is not how much Africa exports to China—it is whether Africa can eventually export more of what it makes, rather than merely more of what it digs out of the ground. That is why the evolving China-Africa partnership deserves far more serious attention as more African countries engage with BRICS and the wider BRICS+ framework. Its significance is not simply diplomatic. It is industrial. Two developments, in particular, point toward a potentially important model for South-South economic cooperation: China's decision to eliminate tariffs on almost all products from African countries that maintain diplomatic relations with Beijing, and the expanding network of special economic zones (SEZs) that is helping African economies build manufacturing capacity. Taken together, these policies address two sides of the same problem. Zero tariffs can open the door to the Chinese market. SEZs can help African producers build something worth selling through that door. That distinction matters. China's zero-tariff program, effective May 1, 2026, represents an unusually ambitious attempt to expand African access to one of the world's largest markets. In its first two months, China's imports from Africa reportedly reached a record $29 billion, compared with $23 billion during the same period in 2025. Those numbers are encouraging. But they should not be mistaken for evidence that Africa's structural trade problem has been solved. It has not. Africa's full-year trade deficit with China reached a record $102 billion in 2025. The fundamental imbalance remains familiar: African economies overwhelmingly export commodities and import finished or higher-value manufactured goods. Removing tariffs does not automatically transform an economy. It simply removes one obstacle. You can remove the toll booth, but if the truck is still carrying raw materials on the way out and finished products on the way back, the structure of trade has not fundamentally changed. This is a lesson I learned firsthand during my years as secretary general of the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and earlier as head of the Textile and Garment Manufacturers' Association. African manufacturers have rarely been held back by tariffs alone. They have struggled with unreliable electricity, inadequate logistics, expensive transportation, shortages of skilled labor, limited access to finance and weak capacity to move into higher-value products. Tariff relief is therefore necessary—but it is not sufficient. The harder task is industrialization. That is where China's experience with special economic zones becomes particularly relevant. Across Africa, Chinese companies and institutions have participated in the financing, development or operation of industrial and economic zones in countries including Ethiopia, Nigeria, Zambia, Djibouti, Kenya, Mauritius and Egypt. The experiences vary considerably, and not every zone has succeeded. That is precisely why they are worth studying. Ethiopia offers a particularly revealing case. The Eastern Industrial Zone and Bole Lemi Industrial Park became important experiments in the country's attempt to attract manufacturing investment and integrate into global supply chains. I studied these zones directly in my master's thesis and PhD research at Peking University. Their experience demonstrated both the possibilities and limitations of the industrial-park approach. Textile and garment production gained a foothold. Manufacturing employment expanded. Foreign investment followed. But infrastructure alone could not eliminate every obstacle. Productivity, skills, supply chains, customs procedures and access to markets remained decisive. That is the larger lesson: an industrial zone is not simply a collection of factories behind a fence. It is an ecosystem. Power must work. Roads must connect. Customs must move. Regulations must be predictable. Workers must have the necessary skills. Suppliers must emerge around anchor manufacturers. Finance must be available not merely to multinational corporations but also to local businesses capable of joining the supply chain. Africa's experience with SEZs is now extensive enough to provide a serious laboratory for learning. By 2023, the continent had more than 230 economic zones across 43 countries. China's role has been important, but the broader African SEZ movement extends well beyond Chinese involvement. The model is also changing. Ethiopia's 2024 transition from an industrial-park framework toward a broader SEZ approach reflected lessons accumulated from years of experimentation. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the launch of the 900-hectare Musompo SEZ in Lualaba Province in 2025 offered another important signal: African countries are beginning to think beyond the export of raw minerals toward processing and participation in emerging value chains such as batteries and electric vehicles. That is the direction Africa must pursue. The continent possesses enormous reserves of cobalt, copper, lithium and other strategic minerals. But possessing the resource is only the beginning. The real economic prize lies in processing, manufacturing, technology, logistics and the skilled jobs built around those industries. Africa should not settle for being the world's warehouse of raw materials while others capture the overwhelming share of value. China's private sector is increasingly relevant to this transformation. Data indicating that nearly one-third of more than 10,000 Chinese firms operating in Africa are engaged in manufacturing—and that these companies account for more than 12 percent of the continent's industrial output—suggest a relationship that is becoming more commercially grounded. Many are private, mid-sized enterprises producing for African consumers rather than simply using Africa as an export platform. During my time as state minister for planning and development, I observed the importance of this transition. State-led investment can build infrastructure and open doors, but private enterprise is what ultimately determines whether an industrial ecosystem survives after the political attention moves elsewhere. This is why examples such as Ethiopia's Eastern Industrial Park and George Shoe Industrial Park matter. Their importance is not merely symbolic. They demonstrate that manufacturing can become commercially viable when infrastructure, investment, market access and entrepreneurship begin working together. For BRICS+ countries, the broader lesson is significant. First, market access can be more transformative than aid. Aid can finance a project. Access to a major market can create an incentive for an entire industry to become competitive. It changes the recipient from a passive beneficiary into a potential producer and exporter. Second, industrialization requires patient capital. Factories cannot be built on short-term financial logic alone. Power plants, roads, logistics systems, industrial parks and supply chains require years of investment before returns become visible. Institutions such as the China-Africa Development Fund have helped address precisely this financing gap. Third, private-sector participation determines durability. Governments can announce industrialization strategies. They can establish zones and negotiate investment agreements. But sustainable manufacturing ultimately depends on entrepreneurs, workers, suppliers and consumers. The evolution from heavily state-directed industrial experiments toward increasingly private-sector-driven manufacturing is therefore more than a technical adjustment. It is evidence of institutional maturity. None of this means that China offers Africa a perfect template. There have been setbacks. Some industrial parks have struggled to attract sufficient investment. Some projects have produced fewer local linkages than expected. Questions about technology transfer, environmental standards, debt, labor conditions and the distribution of economic benefits deserve serious scrutiny. But rejecting the entire model because it is imperfect would be as misguided as accepting it uncritically. The value of the China-Africa experience is precisely that it provides something increasingly rare in development policy: a real-world laboratory operating at scale. Africa's demographic trajectory makes the stakes enormous. By 2050, the continent is projected to have a population of roughly 2.5 billion. Hundreds of millions of young Africans will enter economies that must generate productive employment, build businesses and create new sources of export revenue. The African Continental Free Trade Area, under the broader vision of Agenda 2063, creates an opportunity to turn that demographic expansion into an industrial advantage. China cannot—and should not—be expected to do this alone. Other BRICS+ economies have capital, technology, markets, energy resources and industrial capabilities that can contribute to the same objective. The goal should therefore not be to copy China's model mechanically. It should be to learn from it. Africa needs to ask what worked, what failed, why certain zones attracted investment while others did not, how local firms can enter foreign-invested supply chains, how technology can be transferred, and how infrastructure can be designed around African industrial priorities rather than simply around the extraction of African resources. That is the real promise of China-Africa cooperation. Having spent years connecting Ethiopian private-sector institutions with Chinese counterparts, advising on cross-border investment and studying industrial-park performance at Peking University, I do not see the China-Africa experience as a finished blueprint. I see it as a living laboratory. Its greatest contribution may not be any individual industrial park, investment agreement or tariff concession. It may be the demonstration that market access, infrastructure, patient capital and private enterprise can reinforce one another. Zero tariffs can create the opportunity. SEZs can create the platform. Private manufacturers can create the businesses. African workers and entrepreneurs can create the value. And BRICS+ can provide the wider market, capital and institutional framework to make the transformation scalable. The central challenge for Africa is no longer simply gaining access to global markets. It is acquiring the productive capacity to compete in them. That is the lesson China-Africa cooperation now places before us. The opportunity is enormous. But opportunity, by itself, does not industrialize a continent. Factories do. Skills do. Infrastructure does. Investment does. And above all, value creation does. Africa's next chapter must be about producing more of what the world wants—not merely exporting more of what Africa happens to have. Please follow Blitz on Google News Channel More News Of This Category