President Cyril Ramaphosa in a bilateral meeting with Premier Li Qiang of the People’s Republic of China on the margins of the G20 Leaders’ Summit on November 21 at the Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg. China and South Africa jointly unveiled the Initiative on Cooperation Supporting Modernization in Africa on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) Summit held in Johannesburg on November 22, 2025. At a time of heightened geopolitical fragility and protectionist policies undermining multilateral cooperation, China has demonstrated its commitment to work with the African continent to advance shared modernization and prosperity.
The Initiative demonstrates confidence in Africa despite swelling geopolitical headwinds threatening economic and political stability in the continent. China has been Africa’s largest trading and development partner for over 16 years. The China-Africa trade volume is massive and growing, reaching around $296 billion in 2024.
The fragmented geopolitical order presents major risks to the fragile economies on the African continent. Divisive external interests and transactional, coercive, and unreliable partnerships threaten much needed African political and economic unity to drive collective continental growth and modernization to meet the goals of the Agenda 2063 and the Africa Free Trade Agreement, or African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). According to the African Union (AU) 2025 Africa Integration Report, efforts towards the full realisation of Agenda 2063 and the AfCFTA could be hindered by external headwinds, including global protectionism, rising debt, and shrinking development assistance.
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The report highlights the structural reforms required to deepen regional and continental integration and to accelerate the objectives of Agenda 2063 and AfCFTA. The African Union (AU) 2025 Africa Integration Report is a key decision-support tool to monitor and advance Africa’s integration agenda. The report further suggests that the hostile external geopolitical environment could compound intra-continental economic challenges.
As highlighted in the State of Africa’s Infrastructure Report 2025, Africa faces many challenges ranging from infrastructure bottlenecks, uneven political will, limited statistical capacity, and slow progress towards customs unions and service liberalization. Efforts to address these challenges by accelerating regional integration and economic development could be disrupted under the hostile geopolitical environment, which has resulted in protectionist and coercive economic and political policies. Africa holds an exceptionally large share of the world’s critical mineral resources, making it central to the global energy transition and high-tech manufacturing.
While the rich natural resources are attracting a lot of global interest, much of the value is still captured outside the continent, highlighting the need for improved economic governance, policies allowing for local beneficiation, and reliable, trusted external partnerships and cooperation. The continent contains significant proportions of key minerals such as cobalt, with about 70% of global production coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is also home to major reserves of manganese, platinum-group metals, rare earth elements, graphite, lithium, and nickel — essential resources for batteries, solar panels, electric vehicles, and hydrogen technologies. The State of Africa’s Infrastructure Report 2025 says that the continent holds over $1.1trillion in domestic capital from pensions, insurance funds, public development banks, and sovereign wealth funds which could be unlocked for intra-continental infrastructure development.
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