Online sales driving African exports to China higher

Agricultural produce dominates as livestreaming shows potential of world's largest market for continent's producers

Teshome Toga Chanaka serves as the Ethiopian ambassador to China, but he has also become an avid promoter of his country's coffee over the past year.

"There's no doubt China is a huge market. It's a market of 1.4 billion people, the largest in the world," he said. "That's why we're trying to use every promotion organized by the Chinese government and the private sector to promote Ethiopian products to the Chinese market."

Coffee is one of the country's major agricultural exports and is sold in many countries, including China, but the ambassador hopes that his country's coffee will gain a bigger share of China's market.

In January, Toga took part in a livestream show with a Chinese influencer in Shanghai to sell coffee. He was so unexpectedly successful that he still remembers the experience.

"In less than five seconds, we sold about 11,000 bags of over 450 kilograms each," he said. "You can sell your products in just a fraction of a second."

Given the power of e-commerce, Toga said that he plans to do more to promote coffee and other Ethiopian products like sesame oil, soybeans and roses to the Chinese market.

"We are working in close cooperation with digital companies to sell more Ethiopian products online," he said.

While attending an Ethiopian coffee promotional activity in Beijing last month, Toga said that his country exported more than 12,000 metric tons of coffee last year, an increase of 196 percent over 2020, so more Chinese consumers will have access to beans from the biggest coffee producer in Africa.

Promise in the east

China is a major source of investment and infrastructure development for many countries, particularly in the developing world. But in recent years, more African countries, among them Ethiopia, have begun to see China's rapidly expanding middle class as a major potential market for their goods, especially as they look to boost their economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

They are employing a variety of means, including e-commerce, to tap its potential, and the remarkable progress achieved signals a promising future.

Last year, African exports to China increased by 44 percent to $106 billion, boosted by expanded imports of agricultural and other products, according to the General Administration of Customs.

In the first half of the year, China's imports from Africa increased by 19 percent to $61 billion year-on-year, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce.

As Africa's biggest trading partner for the last decade, China is using e-commerce as a major tool for expanding trade with the continent.

In April and May, an online shopping festival featuring more than 200 goods from 20 African countries was held in China. A series of live-streaming events held during the festival promoted products such as Ethiopian coffee, black tea from Kenya and South African wine.

Actress Liu Tao hosted a live sale of Rwandan coffee on Taobao, Alibaba's e-commerce website, and sold over 500 kilograms of coffee beans in five minutes.

African diplomats have also participated in the livestreaming events. James Kimonyo, Rwanda's ambassador to China, sold hundreds of bags of coffee right after the promotional activity began.

In January, Kimonyo also assumed the role of deliveryman for JD, a major Chinese e-commerce platform, to specially deliver an order of Rwandan coffee to a customer.

In 2020, he participated in two livestreaming events where 2,000 and 3,000 packets of coffee were sold, respectively.