China's ODI slipped in Africa in H1

Affected by weak demand for global goods, lower commodity prices and the Ebola crisis in West Africa, official data shows China's outbound direct investment to Africa dropped over 40 percent year-on-year to $1.19 billion in the first half of this year.

"Chinese companies are gradually diversifying their investments in Africa, as they transform from aid-providers to mature investors," said Shen Danyang, the spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce.

He said China has been keen to enhance its cooperation with Africa in six fields, including finance, manufacturing and infrastructure. The country has set a goal to make an accumulative investment amount of $100 billion in Africa by 2020.

Africa is going through an industrialization phase that is supported by the active involvement of Chinese companies. Shen said Chinese companies can find enormous opportunities in the infrastructure, manufacturing, agriculture and service sectors during this phase.