Africa's Biggest Economic Partner = CHINA.

McKinsey & Company , a management consulting firm recently published its research on the growing relationship between China and Africa. Their research focuses on 8 African countries towards providing real insight into the growing relationship and invalidates a wide range of perceptions about China's influence on the continent.

The report evaluates Africa’s economic partnerships with the rest of the world across five dimensions: Trade, Investment stock, Investment growth, Infrastructure financing and Aid, putting China among the top four partners for Africa across all these dimensions with no other country matching this depth and breadth of engagement.

Source: The closest look yet at Chinese economic engagement in Africa, June 2017 McKinsey report.

The McKinsey's research team tallied more than 10,000 Chinese firms operating in Africa in a wide diversity of sectors & sizes; from small Tanzanian businesses selling of everything from clothes to cheap electronics, to the large scale businesses like the China Nonferrous Metals Mining Group in Zambia and the Bank of China operating in multiple African countries.

Most Chinese firms have made investments that represent a long-term commitment to Africa rather than the perceived trading or contracting activities. A summary of the McKinsey report can be found here.

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