For a company that first set foot on the continent with two motor graders shipped to Morocco in 2002. Sany Heavy Industry’s numbers now look nothing like a modest African footnote. China’s largest construction machinery manufacturer posted 3.5 billion yuan, roughly $517 million, in African sales during the first quarter of 2026 alone. A 70 percent jump from the same period the year before. For chairman Xiang Wenbo, that figure isn’t a peak. It’s a floor.
“I think this is only the beginning. There are still huge opportunities ahead,” Xiang told Xinhua in a recent interview in Nairobi. Sany maintains one of its regional operations. Reflecting on more than two decades of visits to the continent, he said what has struck him most is how much the built environment has changed, Kenya in particular, he noted. Kenya’s transformation over the past decade, leaves him convinced that the continent is now moving through what he called a very good period of development.
Xiang framed Sany’s own trajectory as a proxy for a broader shift already underway in China-Africa economic relations. One moving past simple product exports toward a deeper industrial presence built around infrastructure, clean energy, service networks and workforce training. China has held the position of Africa’s largest trading partner for 15 consecutive years. According to the Ministry of Commerce, Chinese direct investment on the continent has kept climbing alongside that trade relationship. Xiang argued the real value Chinese firms bring now goes beyond capital and equipment: technology transfer and supply-chain depth. In his telling, are what actually convert industrialization ambitions into working productive capacity.
The employment numbers back up at least part of that pitch. Sany directly employs more than 1,000 people across Africa and has sold in excess of 40,000 machines on the continent over the years. Company figures put its total African sales above $1.5 billion and more than 12,000 machines currently in active use. Concentrated in markets including Kenya, Ethiopia, Algeria, Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Angola, Zambia, Congo and Ghana. “Most of the operators were trained by us, which means we have trained a large number of industrial workers,” Xiang said. Adding that the company has built sales and service operations, including repair centers, in almost every African country it operates in. Technicians he described as, in effect, the foundation of Africa’s future manufacturing base. A McKinsey study of Chinese firms operating in Africa found local staff make up close to 90 percent of their combined workforce, a figure broadly consistent with Xiang’s account of Sany’s own hiring pattern.
The scale of the shortfall is well documented elsewhere: the African Development Bank estimates the continent’s annual infrastructure financing gap at somewhere between $68 billion and $108 billion. A deficit widely cited as one of the principal constraints on African competitiveness and on realizing the full promise of the African Continental Free Trade Area. A white paper from China’s State Council Information Office, “China and Africa in the New Era: A Partnership of Equals,” credits Chinese companies with building or upgrading more than 10,000 kilometers of railways and nearly 100,000 kilometers of roads across the continent. Alongside more than 4.5 million local jobs created in the process.
Looking further out, Xiang argued Chinese firms should keep shifting from exporting finished products toward exporting industry itself. Helping African partners build the modern management practices and industrial systems that underpin durable manufacturing capacity. He described China and Africa pursuing modernization together, with no country left behind, as “a very large undertaking” in its own right.
The fourth industrial revolution, driven by artificial intelligence, is unfolding at the same time as a clean-energy revolution led by wind and solar power. An overlap he believes gives African economies a genuine, historic chance to leapfrog older industrial technologies entirely. Sany’s own strategy is leaning into that bet, with the company pursuing what it calls a transition centered on new energy. Green mining, microgrids and utility-scale solar aimed at cutting African mining operations’ reliance on costly conventional grid power. Last year the company donated 500 household solar systems to Malawi. At a recent Sany Africa business summit, representatives from Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia voiced interest in deepening cooperation specifically around the company’s green mining solutions.
Xiang was candid that the operating environment carries real friction including; logistics costs, financing constraints and the long lead times required to build service networks essentially from scratch in markets with limited existing infrastructure. But he framed a specific geopolitical shift as working in China’s favor. As Europe and the United States increasingly turn to non-market measures to shield their own domestic industries, he argued. Third-party markets like those across Africa are becoming the main arena where global manufacturers now compete. The long-standing China-Africa relationship, he said, offers a comparatively stable environment for two-way trade and investment. That stability, in his view, is where Chinese firms’ most durable advantage now lies.
Xiang’s remarks, delivered from Nairobi, land within a China-Kenya relationship that has been running at considerable momentum this year. China’s zero-tariff policy for African exports, in effect since May 1. This policy has already been credited with driving a sharp jump in freight volumes on Kenya’s Chinese-built Standard Gauge Railway. Nairobi hosted the 11th China Trade Week just days ago, drawing more than 200 exhibitors and a specific push into energy and manufacturing cooperation. Aligned with Kenya’s Vision 2030 development blueprint. Diplomatic ties between the two countries date to 1963, one of China’s longer-standing African partnerships. Kenyan officials including Trade Cabinet Secretary Lee Kinyanjui have described the current moment as a genuine structural shift in the country’s trade model. One aimed at building a processed, export-ready industry rather than relying on raw commodity exports alone.
For Xiang, that shift is precisely the opportunity Sany has spent more than two decades positioning itself to serve. Not as a machinery vendor passing through, but as what he clearly hopes will be read as a long-term industrial partner. “The real curtain,” he said, closing the interview, “is only now going up.”
