China’s willingness to lower import tariffs for African goods encouraging, but must be approached thoughtfully

Last week I commented quite positively on China’s offer to lower tariffs on a range of products from Africa.

SA has signed the China-Africa Framework that facilitates this engagement.

While we need to be very careful about its implementation across industries in our economy, especially given reciprocity and our competing interests in Africa, from an agricultural perspective, it appears positive.

I maintain the broadly optimistic view I outlined last week and want to underscore a few points.

First, SA accounts for only 0.4% of China’s agricultural supplier list.

However, this current access in China is vital for the wool and red meat industry. China accounts for roughly 70% of SA’s wool exports.

There is a progressive increase in red meat exports, even though animal diseases currently cause glitches.

The focus should be on expanding this access by lowering duties and other non-tariff barriers to encourage greater exports of fruit, grains and other products to China.

Still, it is essential to emphasise that the focus on China is not at the expense of existing agricultural export markets and relationships. Instead, China offers an opportunity to continue diversifying exports.

Second, China is among the world’s leading agricultural importers, accounting for 9% of global agricultural imports in 2024 (before 2024, China had been a leading importer for many years).

The US was the world’s leading agricultural importer that year, accounting for 10% of global imports.

Germany accounted for 7%, followed by the UK (4%), the Netherlands (4%), France (4%), Italy (3%), Japan (3%), Belgium (3%) and Canada (2%).

This diversity of agricultural demand in global markets leads us to conclude that SA’s agricultural trade interests cannot be limited to a single country but should be spread across the major agricultural importers.

Importantly, the approach of promoting diversity and maintaining access to various regions has been the agricultural trade policy pursued by SA since the dawn of democracy.

For example, in 2025, SA exported a record $15.1bn [R240.8bn] of agricultural products, up 10% from the previous year.

These exports were spread across the diverse regions. The African continent accounted for the lion’s share of SA’s agricultural exports, nearly half of the total value.

Collectively, Asia and the Middle East were the second-largest agricultural markets, accounting for about 21% of global farm exports.

The EU was SA’s third-largest agricultural market, accounting for 19% of exports.

The Americas and the rest of the world were also substantial markets.

In a nutshell, China’s signalling the willingness to lower import tariffs is a welcome development, and adds to our export diversification approach.

Key issue to keep in mind

Lastly, I must also state that while China’s offer looks generous, a country like SA needs to draw appropriate lessons from experience.

Unilateral duty-free, quota-free market access is a double-edged sword — in the short to medium term, it can help a country increase its export share in a significant market, but in the long term, it must be linked to reciprocity to avoid abuse for geopolitical interests.

This aspect of reciprocity must also be carefully evaluated to avoid exposing infant industries in our manufacturing sector to China’s intense competition.

Each country that signs the agreement must carefully consider this issue.

For example, in SA we have an auto industry that deserves some level of protection from a flood of imports from China, particularly in the Eastern Cape.

We also have the manufacturing industry, which is attempting to rebuild and has some domestic policy intervention through the “localisation approach” of the department of trade, industry and competition.

Therefore, when engaging with major manufacturing giants such as China, we must always keep these aspects in mind and ensure that, in the process of seeking market access, South African industries retain some level of protection.

Ultimately, while SA, and indeed African countries, should take advantage of this opportunity, we must aim to conclude a bilateral trade agreement with China that guarantees predictability and certainty.

In the process, we must not expose our most sensitive industries.

Indeed, when we explore the trade agreement approach, the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) friction here will once again pose a challenge for SA.

This is another reason we must move quickly to resolve the SACU friction and untangle SA.

• Sihlobo is the chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa. He is also a senior research fellow at the department of agricultural economics at Stellenbosch University

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