Avocados and honey imports a sign of China’s growing agricultural engagement with Africa
Agricultural cooperation to be high on the agenda when Beijing hosts the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Summit next week.
South Africa is preparing to ship its first avocados to China and Tanzania has won a deal to export honey there as agriculture becomes a new focus of China-Africa engagement.
The deals come as Beijing prepares to host the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Summit next week, with agricultural cooperation expected to be high on the agenda.
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Apart from avocados, China’s food imports from Africa now include soybeans, pineapples, chillies, cashew nuts, sesame seeds and spices.
The September 4-6 FOCAC Summit is expected to see African countries seek duty-free access to China for their products.
In Beijing on Friday, Chinese foreign vice-minister Chen Xiaodong confirmed that “agricultural modernisation” would be part of the summit’s four high-level meetings.
According to observers, China plans to diversify its imports, cutting reliance on main suppliers such as the United States, the European Union or Latin American countries.
China’s General Administration of Customs has since approved a list of South African fresh avocado companies that meet the requirements for exports.
The deal to export South African avocados to China was sealed during President Xi Jinping’s visit to the country in August last year, which saw the signing of a bilateral protocol of related phytosanitary requirements.
“We now have the final go-ahead from the Chinese authorities to export avocados to China,” Derek Donkin, chief executive of the South African Subtropical Growers’ Association, said, adding that the first shipment was about to sail.
China has been seeking more avocado suppliers to meet a growing domestic appetite for the fruit.
South Africa is the third African country to meet the strict Chinese sanitary and phytosanitary requirements to export avocados to China, alongside Kenya, the continent’s largest producer of the fruit, and Tanzania.
Chen Mingjian, the Chinese ambassador to Tanzania, confirmed that China had signed a honey import deal with Tanzania. She said China required about 32 million tonnes of honey each year.
“Indeed a lucrative market. Hope the honey export will boost Tanzania’s beekeeping industry and increase investment in agriculture,” Chen posted on X.
Tanzania’s honey and bee product exports currently generate more than US$77 million annually.
Increased imports of African food products are part of Xi’s plan to support the continent’s agricultural modernisation – a promise he made in Johannesburg last August.
According to China’s foreign ministry, Beijing has promoted cultivation projects such as juncao grass and hybrid rice as part of its agricultural cooperation with Africa.
“Such cooperation provided quality rice and vegetables to the African people and helped modernise the agricultural sector in Africa,” ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said earlier this month. “Agricultural cooperation is the epitome of how China and Africa render each other help.”
According to Boston University’s Global Development Policy Centre, China advanced US$2.3 billion in loans to eight African countries – Angola, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Mozambique, Mauritania, Namibia and Zambia – between 2000 and 2022.
Mandira Bagwandeen, lecturer in the political science department at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, said investing in African agriculture was part of China’s aims to diversify its imports and mitigate potential trade risks or disputes associated with geopolitical tensions.
Bagwandeen said with Chinese lenders declining to fund massive infrastructure projects amid financial issues at home, “diverting funding to the agricultural sector, which is a comparatively less capital-intensive investment sector, is a strategic move”.
“It allows China to still maintain a significant presence in investing in the continent’s development and grow its development portfolio in the region. But, it also creates new markets for its agricultural products – machinery, fertilisers and seeds.”
Lauren Johnston, a China-Africa specialist and an associate professor at the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre, also said the plan to co-modernise Africa’s agriculture aimed to help diversify China’s food-related supply.
That process, in turn, contributes to addressing Africa’s hunger and rural poverty issues while creating parallel industry opportunities, such as in construction, agritechnology and China’s hybrid seeds, Johnston said.
“Ethiopia may be selling coffee, Tanzania exporting sesame seeds or Kenya and South Africa avocados, and coastal African countries seafood – [but] it does not appear to be the goal to transform all African countries into food exporters to China.”
Rather, the goal was also to help mobilise African agricultural productivity, to feed the continent’s growing population, to raise rural incomes and earn parallel international revenues – for both China as investor and Africa as exporter, Johnston said.
Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa, said African countries had a lot to learn from China and needed to import technologies to help boost domestic agriculture.
He said China could consider opening up its market more robustly to high quality products from Africa, particularly South Africa.
“Here the specifics are beef, wines and various fruits. South Africa enjoys access, but only for a select product. The hope is for wider and more ambitious access, and South African authorities will likely be eager for a deeper conversation on this issue with the Chinese authorities,” he said.
Why is the Chinese government so concerned about food security?
China imports a lot more agricultural products from Latin America and Asia, according to Linda Calabrese, senior research fellow and development economist at the Overseas Development Institute in London.
In the past decade, food products made up less than 3 per cent of China-Africa trade, Calabrese said, adding that China’s main imports from Africa were mainly oil seeds and nuts, soybeans and citrus fruit.
Nevertheless, in recent years, China has encouraged imports of African agriculture products in various ways, such as the Alibaba electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP), launched in 2016, allowing Ethiopia and Rwanda SMEs to sell niche products directly to Chinese consumers.
Last week, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s online retail subsidiary AliExpress entered Ethiopia in collaboration with Ethiopian Airlines. It will enable traders to sell and buy products using the platform.
Another initiative is the “green lanes” for African produce set up at the 2021 FOCAC in Senegal, which allowed easier exports to China of products such as Kenyan avocados, South African citruses and Rwandan chillies, Calabrese said.
Dozens of African countries have since benefited from Beijing’s decision to waive tariffs on exports from the “least developed countries” in the continent.
However, “all these initiatives remain small-scale for the moment, and are more geared at supporting African agriculture thrive, rather than making Africa China’s food basket,” Calabrese said.