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Coronavirus pandemic
ChinaPeople & Culture

From Angola to Zambia, China’s African partners brace for coronavirus blow to trade

  • Africa’s exporters and market analysts try to game out effects of health crisis and slowdown while world’s second-largest economy struggles with outbreak
  • One economist expects Beijing to put together stimulus package for economy after epidemic eases

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Foreign Minister Wang Yi is at the front of China’s diplomatic and economic initiatives in Africa, and now partner nations are trying to see a road ahead as Beijing tackles the coronavirus and its effects. Photo: Kyodo
Jevans Nyabiage
Africa’s commodity exporters are bracing for an economic blow as China, its biggest trading partner, struggles to contain a coronavirus outbreak that, as of Wednesday, had killed nearly 500 people, analysts said.
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Chinese demand underpins the economies of various resource-rich countries on the continent, with a slowdown in China rippling out to partners such as Angola, Zambia, Congo Brazzaville and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

“The longer the virus holds down Chinese growth, the worse for Africa’s commodity exporters from Zambia [copper] to Angola [oil],” said Charles Robertson, Moscow-based investment bank Renaissance Capital’s global chief economist and an emerging markets analyst.
Doraleh port in Djibouti, a partner of China in East Africa. Photo: Felix Wong
Doraleh port in Djibouti, a partner of China in East Africa. Photo: Felix Wong

However, he said that once the virus was brought under control, “we expect a China stimulus that would lift commodities and the countries that have suffered”.

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China has been Africa’s largest trading partner since it overtook the United States in 2009. Africa’s importance to Beijing is demonstrated each year by a high-level diplomatic tour, which last month involved Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
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