Nigeria's $24.9bn China imports help push Africa deficit to $102bn
- Africa's goods deficit with China hit a record $102.01 billion in 2025, a finance expert's analysis says.
- Nigeria imported a record $24.9 billion worth of Chinese goods, led by machinery, electricals and vehicles.
- The analyst says the problem is not cheap goods but Africa's inability to build the machines it buys.
Africa bought $225.03 billion worth of goods from China in 2025, while selling far less in return, leaving the continent with a record trade gap of $102.01 billion, according to an analysis by Nairobi-based finance expert Brian Muloni.
The deficit grew by 64.5 per cent in one year, and Chinese exports to Africa rose 25.8 per cent, the analysis says, citing Chinese customs data.
Nigeria's share of that bill was $24.9 billion, a record for the country and a reversal of three straight years of falling imports from China. Machinery topped the list at $3.12 billion, followed by electrical equipment at $1.94 billion and vehicles at $1.46 billion.
For ordinary Nigerians, the numbers point to something bigger than shop shelves: much of what the country buys abroad is the equipment factories, farms and builders need to work. When those tools come from outside, the money to pay for them leaves too, and the naira feels it.
Not a flood of cheap goods
Muloni argues that the common claim that China is dumping subsidised consumer goods on Africa does not match the figures. Intermediate goods made up about 45 per cent of the exports, capital goods 30 per cent, and finished consumer goods only 25 per cent.
Electronics were the single largest category at $67.83 billion, transport equipment followed at $42.86 billion, up 70.7 per cent, and textiles and apparel at $33.94 billion.
This is not a flood of cheap finished products. It is a flood of the tools of production,
Muloni said. He added that he found no direct evidence China was deliberately selling below cost to target Africa, and that the exports instead reflect China's huge factory capacity and its search for new markets.
He also tied Nigeria's import rebound to foreign exchange. Tight access to dollars between 2022 and 2024 held imports down, while improved liquidity after economic reforms helped them recover in 2025.
That same dollar squeeze makes Nigeria more exposed than South Africa, which imported $23.57 billion from China but has a deeper industrial base to bargain with. Kenya took in about $5.2 billion, up from $4.5 billion, while Ghana ran an $8.71 billion deficit, importing more than four times what it sold to China.
Across Kenya, Ghana and other African economies, the pattern is similar: raw materials go out, machinery comes in. In Zimbabwe, trade with China reached $4.41 billion, and in the Democratic Republic of Congo China accounts for about 35 per cent of imports.
Muloni warns that persistent trade deficits can restrict the money countries need to grow, even when the imported machines are useful.
What happens next
His conclusion is that the gap will not close on its own. It will narrow only if African countries process their own raw materials and build the machinery and parts they now buy abroad.
Until African economies can make the machines they buy, the deficit will remain not because China is dumping, but because Africa is buying what it cannot build,
he said.