MacroSnaps10 September 2026
No. 61America used to trade three times more with Africa than China. Now China trades four times more than America.
China-Africa trade$296bn(2024)US-Africa trade$73bn(2024)
Two-way trade (exports plus imports) between China and Africa, and between the United States and Africa, 2000 to 2024. Billions of US dollars.
Why this is happening
- China went after what Africa had: oil, copper, cobalt, the raw materials its own factories needed, and paid for it by building the roads, railways and ports to move it, backed by more than $180 billion in Chinese state loans to African governments since 2000.
- A lot of the old US-Africa trade was oil, mainly from Nigeria and Angola. Once American shale drilling took off in the 2010s, the US barely needed African crude, and that trade never came back.
- China still does not own the continent the way it trades with it. Its total investment stock in Africa, about $42 billion, is smaller than the $60 billion the US holds, and smaller than the UK's or France's alone; Beijing trades and lends far more than it buys.
The take
This was not a hostile takeover, it was persistence: two decades of steady trade and financing while Washington's interest rose and fell with the price of oil. Showing up every year, for twenty years, beat any single grand gesture.