| Africa, the world’s second largest continent with 53 countries, boasts a total area of 30.2 million square kilometers. That accounts for one fifth of the world’s total land area, and three times as much as that of China. This continent is abundant with mineral resources.In terms of reserves and generation conditions of mineral resources, Africa is the world’s most fertile continent. Its reserves of important mineral resources such as gold, diamond, platinum family metal, bauxite, diamond, uranium rank number one in the world. It also has large reserves in chromium, manganese, vanadium, Titanium, copper, nickel, crude oil and natural gases. To be specific, 20% of the world’s reserves of uranium and chromite are located in Africa. As for manganese and bauxite, vanadium and titanium, diamond, platinum family metal, gold, diamond, and phosphorite, their reserves in Africa respectively account for 30%, 20%, 52.4%, 90%, 50%, 60% and 42% of the world’s total. Africa also boasts remarkable reserves of lead, zinc, antimony and barite, etc. In addition, most of the mineral deposit are in high grade and spread evenly, which can be easily exploited by scale. In 2009, proved reserves of crude oil in Africa was 127.7 billion barrels, accounting for 9.6% of the world’s total. New oil fields have lately been discovered in the coast and inshore of Guinea Bay. The proved reserves of natural gases in Africa was 13.86 trillion cubic meters, accounting for 7.9% of the world’s total. All these indicate great investment potentials.In recent years, Africa has witnessed continuous improvement in economic development and appeasement of frictions, as well as the increasing improvement in law and mechanism. Especially, African countries have begun to attach great importance to mineral resources development, and have actively sought reforms in the diversification of exploitation and privatization of mineral resources. All these have provided great development opportunities for Sino-African cooperation in mineral resources. At this critical period of historical opportunities, China needs to actively deepen the Sino-African economic cooperation, widen the cooperation fields and strengthen the bilateral mineral cooperation.This paper mainly studies the following seven issues: Chapter 1 is preface; Chapter 2 is literature review of related theories in trade and investment; Chapter 3 is on China’s mineral resources strategy and Africa’s mineral resources; Chapter 4 is the current situation of cooperation in mineral resources between China and Africa; Chapter 5 is on opportunities and challenges faced by China in Africa’s mineral resources development; Chapter 6 is policy recommendations on promoting Sino-African mineral resources cooperation; Chapter 7 is the conclusion part, summarizing the whole paper.This paper makes innovation in the following 4 aspects: First, it systematically analyzes the status quo of China’s trade in mineral resources with Africa; Secondly, it systematically analyzes the status quo of China’s investment in Africa; Thirdly, it systematically analyzes the world’s major powers’economic and trade strategies towards Africa; Last but not least, this paper analyzes the importance of mineral resources commodities in Sino-African economic and trade relations from a strategic perspective, integrating economic relations and mineral resources strategies. Based on that, this paper raises the objective, model of Sino-African economic and trade development, as well as some specific practical measures, which will have significant meaning in promoting the development of economic and trade relations between China and Africa.
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