China and African countries have boosted economic ties despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rising bilateral trade volume reflects the enthusiasm of China-Africa trade exchanges.

China-Africa trade reached $185.2 billion between January and September of this year, up 38.2 percent year on year, establishing a new record for the period.

China's direct investment in Africa registered $2.59 billion in the first nine months of the year, exceeding the level of the same period in 2019 before the epidemic, data from China's Ministry of Commerce showed.

The bilateral trade volume between China and Africa has increased from 87.37 billion yuan ($13.69 billion) in 2000 to 1.3 trillion yuan in 2020, an average annual increase of 14.5 percent, customs data showed.

The bilateral trade volume of China's private enterprises with Africa has increased from 4.76 billion yuan in 2000 to 783 billion yuan in 2020, an average annual increase of 29.1 percent. The proportion of private enterprises in China-Africa bilateral trade has increased from 5.4 percent to 60.2 percent.

The Chinese share of African exports exceeded 21 percent in 2020, according to a white paper detailing China-Africa cooperation released last week.

China's imports in services from Africa have been growing at an average annual rate of 20 percent since 2017, creating close to 400,000 jobs on the continent every year, according to the white paper.

China is actively encouraging enterprises to import non-resource products from Africa with an increasing amount of high-quality African agricultural products entering the Chinese market.

The average growth rate of China's imports of African agricultural products reached 11.4 percent in the past five years, and China has become the second-largest destination for African agricultural exports, China's Ministry of Commerce data showed.

The eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation will be held from Monday to Tuesday in Dakar, Senegal.

The forum will assess the implementation of the results of the previous summit held in 2018, the situation of China-Africa unity in the fight against the epidemic, and lay out the development direction of China-Africa relations in the next three years and beyond.