China and Rwanda's cooperative relationships have gone from the governmental level to being actionable plans in private sectors, and it's helping to strike a trade balance between the two countries, said Charles Kayonga, Rwandan Ambassador to China.

"It started from the governmental level, the political cooperation provides the groundwork for economic cooperation, now it's the private sector implement the cooperation every day," said Kayonga.

"Companies in Rwanda are selling their products in China's e-commerce platform now, such as coffee and tourism products. It's not much, but it's a start," said Kayonga at China Africa Economic and Trade Expo held in Changsha, central China's Hunan Province last week.

Rwanda was the first African nation to join China's e-commerce company Alibaba's electronic world trade platform (EWTP) back in October 2018. As part of the agreement, small and medium-sized enterprises in Rwanda can sell their products, such as coffee beans, on Alibaba's e-commerce platform.

When browsing Tmall now, Alibaba's online store, a customer can at least find four brands of Rwandan coffee products, each has over 100 orders every month.

According to Tmall, just a few days after the products were launched into the Chinese market last October, over 1,000 bags of Rwandan coffee beans were sold.

Tmall Global also ran an educational campaign called “Tear Off the Label for Africa” – to strip away the traditional view on African and products from the continent – to raise Chinese consumer's awareness of Rwandan products. The campaign has aroused Chinese consumer's interest in Rwandan coffee by 200%, Tmall Global said.

"I believe that's going to help change the trade imbalance between China and Rwanda gradually," said Kayonga.

According to Kayonga, part of the trade imbalance between China and Rwanda was because Rwanda doesn't have many industries yet to develop a variety of products and provide employment.

"But China is investing in the manufacturing and process sectors in Rwanda, which helped us to have more diversified value-added products to offer," Kayonga said.

Kayonga is also seeing more support from China as the country opens up its market to African products. First there are exhibitions, like the Changsha expo or the Shanghai expo last year, which allow African companies to market their products in China.

China and Rwanda's trade surged by more than 40 percent year on year in the first 11 months of 2018.

Rwanda’s economy has seen growth thanks in part to coffee and tea exports, as well as support from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. For the first half of 2018, Rwanda's GDP rose by 8.6 percent.

Kayonga also believes that if fully implemented, the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China could help African countries facilitate and expand trade and business, and improve production capacity.

"It can actually help us to build a shared future together," said Kayonga.