China is to award $20 billion in loans to African countries over next three years and has said it is only prepared to make infrastructure deals on a sub-regional, not country-by country, basis.
The last decade has seen China increase its presence in arguably the least developed populated continent and with the African Development Bank estimating that $360 billion is required between now and 2040 to upgrade its infrastructure, Chinese companies and contractors are set to be major players for decades to come.
At the Fifth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Chinese minister of commerce Chen Deming said: “African countries are usually small ones, so infrastructure construction is often stopped at the borders.” 
He added: “From now on, China will pay special attention to cooperation with African subregions. We will make overall plans on infrastructure construction in the subregions, taking the interconnection of roads, water, electricity and telecommunications networks into consideration and pushing forward bilateral cooperation in a market-driven way.”
