Africa is an increasingly important market for Chinese tilapia and is acting as a buffer against increasing trade tensions with the U.S., according to an executive with a major tilapia exporter.
Chongle Guan, vice general manager at Ningde Xiawei Food Co., wants to up shipments to key markets like Kenya in 2018.
“We face an impact from the China-U.S. trade war but we are hoping this will be minimized by our expansion into [new] markets, particularly Africa,” Guan told SeafoodSource on 4 September during the Seafood Expo show in Hong Kong.
Ningde Xiawei farms and processes both tilapia and yellow croaker in Fujian, China’s leading region for seafood production in 2017.
The Chinese government has been playing host to political leaders from Africa this week as part of a long-running China Africa Forum initiated by the Chinese government more than a decade ago as a governmental conference.
China has been building infrastructure across Africa with a mix of donor funds and loans from Chinese banks, and recently pledged USD 60 billion (EUR 51.8 billion) to development projects on the continent.
