China’s tariff-free access for Africa’s biggest economies took effect Friday, with Beijing offering two years of zero tariffs for imports from a group of 20 countries as its economic rival, the United States, moves toward new import taxes under President Donald Trump’s push for protectionism.
The China policy, which came into force Friday, covers Africa’s 20 largest economies, including South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Algeria and Kenya, according to coverage from the Associated Press. China had already dropped tariffs on imports from 33 poorer African countries, meaning that the continent’s 54 nations were largely brought under the arrangement—leaving 53 eligible for what China described as “tariff-free treatment” for their goods.
China singled out Eswatini as the exception. The Associated Press report said China does not grant the tariff-free treatment to the small southern African nation because it is the only country in Africa that maintains formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
Chinese officials also described the policy’s rollout through trade enforcement details. China’s official Xinhua News Agency said that a shipment of 24 metric tons of apples from South Africa cleared customs in Shenzhen in the early hours of Friday and was the first batch of goods to enter under the new zero-tariff policy.
Xinhua also said China’s Commerce Ministry expects the tariff-free approach to help African exporters, highlighting products such as cocoa from Ivory Coast and Ghana, coffee and avocados from Kenya, and citrus fruits and wine from South Africa. The report said some of those goods previously faced tariffs ranging from 8% to 30%.
The announcement lands as African governments and businesses assess shifts in U.S. trade policy following the Supreme Court’s February ruling against Trump’s far-reaching global tariffs as unconstitutional. The report said Trump responded by proposing “very powerful alternatives” and promptly rolling out temporary import taxes to replace the struck-down tariff scheme.
Several African economies said they would look for new markets for some of their products after the Trump administration imposed reciprocal tariffs a year ago, when rates reached 30% for South Africa at one point and higher than 40% for some other African countries. In February, South Africa’s Trade Minister Parks Tau told bilateral counterparts in China that South Africa “looks forward to working with China in a friendly, pragmatic and flexible manner,” according to the AP report.
China has been positioning its Africa tariff moves against the backdrop of broader trade dynamics. The report said China hailed the tariff-free deal as promoting “common development,” but it also pointed to a trade imbalance in which China’s exports to Africa grew faster than Africa’s exports to China, widening the deficit for African countries.
The AP report said China-Africa trade hit a record $348 billion in 2025. It said China’s exports to Africa rose by around 25% to $225 billion while its imports from Africa increased by only around 5% to $123 billion, a split that contributed to the widening gap. The report also cited an assessment by Thierry Pairault, described as a China-Africa expert at France’s National Center for Scientific Research, who wrote that while agricultural products could benefit, many African raw material exports already had tariff-free access to China.
Pairault said Xi Jinping was positioning China as an “antithesis of Western protectionism” and that the gesture aimed to appeal to African public opinion and global markets. But he also wrote that the policy “only applies where it costs (China) almost nothing,” reflecting what he described as limits to the tariff-free deal’s reach for major categories of exports.
In the immediate term, the policy’s effect will depend on how quickly exporters can route goods through Chinese customs under the zero-tariff rules and how that aligns with shifting tariff exposure in other markets, including the United States.