Bank of China plays important role in strengthening Sino-African relations

Supporting capital flows

In 2023, the trade value between China and Africa reached a historical peak of $282.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 1.5 percent, while the trade volume between China and nearly half of the African countries saw a double-digit growth rate. The economic and trade cooperation between China and Africa continues to strengthen, helping to leverage their respective advantages and vast markets for mutual benefit and win-win outcomes.

As a century-old brand, BOC has long been deeply involved in the field of cross-border finance. Leveraging its global service network, it comprehensively supports interconnectivity between Chinese and African enterprises at home and abroad. With a large number of Chinese enterprises flowing into Africa, BOC's optimized services ensure smooth cross-border trade. For example, more than 30 large-scale State-owned Chinese enterprises and nearly 300 large-scale private Chinese enterprises in Angola faced difficulties in cross-border capital flows for years. Upon understanding their situation, BOC's Luanda branch carefully assessed the needs of the Chinese enterprises, established trading channels on Bloomberg's trading platform FXGO and improved the infrastructure of the foreign exchange market.

While participating in local foreign exchange market transactions and supporting the anti-money laundering campaign, BOC provides proxy foreign exchange trading and cross-border remittance services for Chinese companies investing overseas. Since 2020, the BOC's Luanda branch has helped a group of Chinese enterprises in Angola acquire more than $500 million in foreign currency, which has removed the barrier to cross-border capital flows.

In Zambia, a country with rich copper resources, BOC provided $150 million in credit support for the first phase of China Nonferrous Metal Mining's Kambove Copper Wet Smelting Project to support construction of the project with a seven-year term. The project is now in operation. And with a production capacity of 28,000 metric tons of cathode copper, it is driving economic and social development in Kambove and surrounding areas and is increasing the supply of local fiscal revenue and supporting national strategic resource.

While assisting Chinese enterprises in going global, BOC also serves as a bridge in facilitating the introduction of more African products into the Chinese market. In Tanzania, BOC's representative office seized the opportunity of the annual China International Import Expo in Shanghai to connect local avocado enterprises with the Chinese market. After discovering sales channels, this initiative promoted the trade of Tanzanian avocados with China.

In Zambia, leveraging the local geographical and ecological endowments, BOC facilitated Zambian honey reaching Chinese households. Since 2016, BOC has annually organized dozens of small and medium-sized Zambian enterprises to participate in the CIIE and the bank's cross-border investment and trade matchmaking meetings in China. It has successfully introduced seven Zambian honey enterprises to the Chinese market, and according to customs statistics, between 2019-23, Zambia exported a total of 64 tons of high-quality honey to China.