Over the past two decades, China has significantly increased trade with Africa and invested billions of dollars in building roads, railways and ports across the continent.
This was done through the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, or FOCAC - a conference held every three years to decide how African countries and China can work best together.
This year's session began on Wednesday in Beijing and continues until Friday, when Chinese Prime Minister Xi Jinping will address the conference.
China has recently changed its strategy and is offering Africa more high-tech and "green economy" products.
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In the last twenty years, China has become Africa's largest trading partner, by far the largest investor in African countries, and by far their largest lender.
In 2022 (the most recent year for which data is available in its entirety), China made trade deals worth more than $250 billion.
It mainly imported raw materials such as oil and minerals, and exported mostly manufactured goods.
In 2022, it invested five billion dollars in African economies, mainly to build new transport links and energy plants and open mines.
In 2022, Chinese companies earned almost 40 billion from these projects.
There are now 3.000 Chinese companies in Africa, according to the World Economic Forum.
China also has $134 billion in outstanding loans in African countries, from money it borrowed for construction.
It holds about 20 percent of all debts that African countries have towards the rest of the world.
However, recently there has been a reduction in China's loans to African countries and its investments in Africa.
This is because many African countries are having trouble repaying debts for the infrastructure that China has built in their countries, says Professor Steve Cang of SOAS, University of London.
"China was happy to lend money for projects in Africa such as railways that Western countries and the World Bank did not want to finance, because there was no commercial calculation for them," he says.
"Now many African countries are finding that they are not getting enough returns from those projects to be able to repay the loans."
"Today, China's loans to Africa are a bit more deliberate," says Dr Alex Vines of Chatham House, a London-based foreign policy think tank.
"They are looking for projects that can be better monetized."
China is also shifting its focus from offering African countries big infrastructure projects for things like roads, railways and ports to equipping them with high-tech like 4G and 5G telecommunications networks, space satellites, solar panels and electric vehicles.
"China has been accused of flooding the African market with electric vehicles," says Dr Vines.
"It's one way for China to export its new cutting-edge green technologies."
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Has doing business with China helped or hurt Africa?
China began to build large-scale business ties with African countries in 1999, when the Chinese Communist Party launched the Exit strategy.
The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) held its first session in 2003 and is now a partnership platform for China and 53 African countries.
At first, for China, the emphasis was on importing as much raw materials as possible from Africa, so that it could produce goods for export around the world, according to Dr. Vines.
"China has lent large amounts of money to Angola to build infrastructure, in order to get oil supplies in return," he says.
"These projects also provided jobs for the Chinese people. At one time there were more than 170.000 Chinese workers in Angola."
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China describes investment in Africa as a "win-win".
However, the construction projects that China has completed in Africa have brought very little benefit to the locals, Professor Cang says, and have caused great dissatisfaction among them.
"Chinese companies mostly bring in their own workers and don't provide many local jobs," he says.
"Also, there is an impression that they employ workers in jobs with harsh working conditions."
Lending to African countries skyrocketed in the year after 2013, when China launched the Belt and Road Initiative to boost trade networks across Africa and Asia.
It reached its peak with over 28 billion dollars in 2016.
China has been accused of lending to Africa in an exploitative way, persuading governments to borrow huge sums of money and then demanding concessions from them when they start having trouble repaying them.
Angola has amassed $18 billion in debt to China, Zambia more than $10 billion and Kenya $6 billion, according to Chatham House.
All of them had big problems to repay those sums.
China has often lent money to African countries and tied repayments to their earnings from raw material exports.
These agreements have helped China gain control over several mineral mines in countries such as the Congo.
The head of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina, told the Associated Press news agency that governments should avoid these types of loans.
"They're just bad, first and foremost because you can't charge the property properly," he says.
"If you have minerals or oil underground, how do you determine the price for a long-term contract? It's a big challenge."
However, says Dr. Vines, "China's 'debt trap diplomacy' doesn't really exist."
"China sometimes behaves exploitatively when dealing with a weak country," he says, "but stronger governments can do business with it without going into high debt."
What are China's plans for Africa in the future?
FOCAC, which began in Beijing on Wednesday, is the most comprehensive and best-established partnership platform between African countries and any world power, according to Dr Shirley Ze Yu of the London School of Economics.
Every three years, it sets new goals and priorities.
"It is overwhelmingly a strategy that best engages China as Africa's external partner," she says.
"At the end of the century, 40 percent of the world's population will live in Africa," she says.
"It is no secret that Africa holds the key to the global economic future."
However, China's interests in Africa are not only commercial, but political, says Dr. Vines.
"You have more than 50 African countries in the United Nations," he says.
"She convinced almost every one of them to withdraw recognition of Taiwan as a state."
"We are now getting a clearer picture of what China wants from Africa," says Professor Cang.
"She wants to become the protector of the Global South and use that position to increase influence in the United Nations and other international organizations. China wants African countries to be its 'supporting supporting cast'."
FOCAC, he says, is not an association of equals.
"There is a great imbalance of power. If you agree with China, then you are welcome. No one is going to say they don't agree with what she plans to do."
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