The trade between China's Shandong Province and Africa

1. Overview of Shandong Province's Co-operation with Africa

Shandong Province takes the initiative to serve the country's openness, actively integrates into the construction of the "Belt and Road", deeply participates in the "nine projects" of China-Africa cooperation, makes every effort to promote the construction of the green, low-carbon and high-quality development of the pioneering zone, strives to build a new high ground for opening up to the outside world, and continues to deepen and implement economic and trade cooperation with Africa.

In 2021, Shandong Province formulated the "Shandong Province Action Plan for Economic and Trade Cooperation with Africa (2022-2024)" to implement the Dakar Action Plan of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), and has been supporting the implementation programme every year, focusing on the 11 key tasks of "production capacity cooperation, agricultural development, infrastructure construction, and expanding imports" to promote the work in a pragmatic manner.

Especially in the environment of the global Xin Guan epidemic in the past three years, Shandong Province has achieved stable development of trade and economic cooperation with Africa with the concerted efforts of all people in the province and overcoming difficulties.

In 2022, Shandong Province's import and export trade with Africa exceeded the 30 billion USD mark for the first time. In the past three years, the actual investment from Africa to Shandong Province has been 100 million USD, Shandong Province has invested 380 million USD in Africa, and the turnover of contracted projects to the African region has been completed at 8.18 billion USD. The number of provincial-level overseas co-operation parks in Africa has reached 6, there are 13 overseas provincial-level overseas warehouses, and there are 4 overseas self-organised exhibitions.

2. Shandong's trade with Africa

In 2022, Shandong's import and export trade with Africa amounts to US$30.55 billion, up 4.2 per cent year-on-year, accounting for 10.8 per cent of the country's total. From the point of view of Shandong's trade with Africa in recent years, except for the sharp decline in 2020 due to the impact of the epidemic, the other years have generally shown a steady progress in the development trend. In 2021, the Shandong Provincial Government quickly responded to the epidemic by issuing the Implementation Programme for the Innovative Development of Foreign Trade of Shandong Province (2021-2022), which put forward 10 initiatives to implement the four major actions of trade facilitation, superior import and export, promotion of new forms of foreign trade, and integration of the trade industry, which resulted in a net increase of US$8 billion in the trade volume with Africa that year, an increase of 37.7 per cent. In 2022, the policies and measures introduced during the epidemic to support foreign trade and foreign investment enterprises were optimised and integrated, and 32 pragmatic and effective "dry goods" policies and measures were sorted out, and the Provincial List of Policies and Measures for Stabilising Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment was released, and the trade with Africa still achieved steady growth on the basis of the high growth in the previous year.

3. Exports to Africa

In 2022, Shandong exported $18.64 billion to Africa, up 11.4 per cent year-on-year, 0.2 percentage points higher than the national growth rate, accounting for 11.3 per cent of the national share. The main export markets are Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana and other countries. In terms of export commodities, five major categories of commodities, including means of transport, steel, textile yarn, fabrics and products, new pneumatic rubber tyres and machinery and equipment, accounted for 70 per cent of the province's total exports to Africa. Among them, means of transport increased by 33.6 per cent year-on-year.

4. Economic and Trade Cooperation Park in Africa

Founded in 2003 and invested by Shandong Zhongyang Industrial Group Company, VWIP is located in Omotosho, Ondo State, Nigeria. The park is positioned as a resource-based comprehensive overseas economic and trade co-operation zone, with the ecological recycling forestry industry as the leading one, carrying out the deep-level recycling production of raw materials for the forestry industry, and at the same time attracting the related supporting forestry and animal husbandry, logistics, alcohol, formaldehyde, cement, asphalt, and other building materials related industries. With a total investment of 80.56 million US dollars, it plans to build 6,000 acres of park land and 180,000 acres of plantation woodland, which is divided into two phases, of which the first phase is dominated by the forestry-related manufacturing industry, and has already realised the "five passes and one leveling", and the second phase is planned to invest 30 million US dollars. More than 20 enterprises from China's Shandong Province and other provinces have entered the park in the fields of wood panels, chemicals, alcohol, formaldehyde, wood pulp and paper, ceramic tiles, gypsum boards, forestry, power generation, heating, logistics, international trade and overseas warehouses, etc. The six products of ceramic tiles, paper, formaldehyde, gypsum boards and alcohol have filled the gaps in the Nigerian national industry.