Cross-border e-commerce has become an important engine for the fast growing economic and trade cooperation between China and Africa, bringing a large number of African goods to China, the Xinhua-run Economic Information Daily reported Thursday.

Through cross-border e-commerce platforms, coffee from Ethiopia, chili sauce from Rwanda, black tea from Kenya, chocolate from Ghana, cashew nuts from Tanzania, etc., found an easy way to reach Chinese consumers.

For example, more than 200 varieties of goods from over 20 African countries were introduced to Chinese consumers through live-streaming events on e-commerce platforms during an online shopping festival for the promotion of African goods held by China from April 28 to May 12 last year. Specially, the sales of Kenyan black tea and Ethiopian coffee during the festival surged 409 percent and 143.1 percent from the figure in 2021, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

Chinese cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Kilimall, Alibaba.com, Kikuu, and Shein have also endeavored to enter the African market.

For instance, Kilimall, an e-commerce platforms founded in Kenya in 2014 with most of its supply chain in China, has launched e-commerce transaction, mobile payment, and cross-border logistics services for over 10 million African users, who are mainly from Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria, and created more than 10,000 jobs for locals, according to Lu Xiaoyong, the company's marketing manager.

Cross-border e-commerce platforms can help enterprises reach more potential customers, with reduced logistics, inventory and rental costs, shortened procurement and sales cycles, and higher production and operational efficiency, said Xu Ci, general manager of Changsha Wuxian Xingkong company, noting that the company received additional orders from South African clients for solar photovoltaic panels on Alibaba.com, the online business-to-business (B2B) marketplace for global wholesalers under the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group.