Abstract
Africa is one of the richest continents in term of natural resources such as oil, gold, diamonds, wood, and many other treasures. The continent also ranks as the poorest country in the world. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the African continent acquired a central position in the worldwide oil geopolitics. The rise of tensions in the Arabic-Persian Gulf conjugated with the increasing growth of energy request emanating from big emergent countries turned international interest to the African continent with a view to develop production capacities. Having arrived in great numbers in the country from the middle of the 1990s, China maintained a privileged relationship with Africa. Thus, the bilateral trade between both regions was multiplied by fifty times between 1980 and 2005. The numbers even quintupled between 2000 and 2006, passing from 10 to 55 billion, and should reach 100 billion in 2010. China has already established more than 900 firms in Africa, and in 2007, has taken the place of France as second biggest business partner of Africa.
