Why are African merchants flocking to Yiwu? The answer lies in a "supermarket"

Tides surge through Yiwu, and goods flow across the world. As the globally renowned "World Capital of Small Commodities," Yiwu continues to deepen China-Africa economic and trade cooperation, with its level of openness and international influence rising steadily. Recently, reporters examined how Yiwu builds a commercial bridge connecting Africa and embracing the Global South market. Striking economic data are the most powerful confirmation of Yiwu market's vitality. In the first three quarters of this year, Yiwu's citywide gross regional product reached 208.88 billion yuan, up 7.9% year on year. The added value of high-tech manufacturing grew 57.4% year on year, while manufacturing investment and high-tech industry investment rose 30.2% and 59.4% year on year, respectively. Behind the strong growth curve is a vivid picture of thriving market entities in Yiwu, accelerated clustering of new business forms, and continuously strengthening endogenous momentum in foreign trade. "Yiwu Good Products" Sell Well in Africa The complete transformation of market carriers has become the core engine for Yiwu to deepen China-Africa trade and unleash openness and vitality. The Yiwu Global Digital Trade Center, with total investment of 8.3 billion yuan, is a landmark project for Zhejiang's digital trade upgrading and for raising the level of opening-up. Since opening in October 2025, this super market complex covering 562 mu and with 125,000 square meters of floor area has reshaped Yiwu's commercial format. More than 5,200 shops cover multiple emerging industries; second-generation merchants, second-generation entrepreneurs, and the new generation account for 52%, and merchants with independent brands or operating IP products account for 68%. Younger and more diverse business entities, along with constantly emerging new products and new business forms, have become a window for observing the iteration of the Yiwu market. From cramped stalls to boutique stores, Yiwu has gone through six generations of market iteration, achieving leapfrog upgrading of business forms and operating models. Africa has always been an important foreign trade partner for Yiwu, and a large number of African buyers travel to Yiwu year-round to select products and place orders. Since 2020, with the rollout of digital infrastructure such as the Chinagoods platform, the "World Yiwu" trade large model, and Yipay, the Yiwu market has accelerated its transition to digital trade. Merchants use digital tools to connect with global customers, and overseas buyers place orders in the cloud. Data show that the "World Yiwu" trade large model App has more than 80,000 registered users, 31 self-developed AI products have served more than 370,000 person-times in total, and deep users have seen average order growth of more than 30%, with the digital foundation continuously empowering the entire foreign trade chain. In Yiwu's trade map with Africa, the entrepreneurial story of "second-generation entrepreneur" Zhu Shun is highly representative. His father, Zhu Jinmin, founded Jinmin Electric, which began as only a small factory; in 2012, Zhu Shun took over the baton, when the company had only one storefront in Yiwu International Trade City. It was in that year that he resolutely decided to go to Africa to open up the market. Family members tried to dissuade him and strongly opposed the idea. He still moved forward firmly, even asking an African employee to please run the store well on his behalf if he could not return. His first stop was Burkina Faso, a market where few Chinese merchants had set foot at the time, and with the courage to dare to venture and try, he successfully opened the door to local commerce. After more than a decade of deepening roots in the African market, what was then a single storefront has now grown into an Africa-focused holding group with business covering 26 African countries, more than 10,000 African customers, and more than 95% of products mainly sold to Africa. As chairman of the Yiwu China-Africa Chamber of Commerce, Zhu Shun has also invested in building the China-Africa Building, with 37 key projects, 6 major proprietary brands, more than 600 intellectual property rights, and more than 10,000 cooperative customers; African enterprises account for more than 90% of tenant companies, continuously driving commercial exchanges between China and Africa. In addition, he has also voiced the views of Yiwu enterprises on occasions such as the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, becoming a benchmark microcosm of Yiwu merchants taking root in Africa and deepening China-Africa economic and trade ties. Behind the iterative upgrading of the market is the continuously rising heat of trade with Africa. From January to September this year, Yiwu's exports to Africa reached 135.903 billion yuan, up 30.18% year on year. At the same time, Yiwu continues to deepen its overseas layout, establishing overseas sub-markets in Angola and Tanzania, continuously weaving a dense small-commodity trade network covering all of Africa, and enabling "Yiwu good products" to take root and sell well across Africa. From "Products Going Global" to "Brands Going Global" In Yiwu, the market is not only a trading window, but also the main front for industrial innovation, creative incubation, and brand growth. Located in Suxi Town, Minghong Science and Innovation Park focuses on IP incubation and digital technology application, injecting a core of scientific and technological creativity into traditional small commodities. According to Huang Changchao, chairman of the Yiwu Cultural Goods Industry Association, the park takes "innovation incubation + industrial clustering" as its core, promoting the cultural goods industry toward high-end, digital, and international development, and enabling Yiwu cultural and creative products to enter global markets including Africa. In recent years, a group of tenant enterprises has embarked on a path of differentiated upgrading. Keqi Cultural Creativity has broken away from the traditional stationery idea of "focusing only on writing" and integrated creative design into product research and development; Yilang Apparel has deepened its presence in accessories such as scarves, hats, and gloves, taking the route of structural improvement and functional innovation, with seamless sun-protection hats, neck-protection scarves, and certified seamless knitted gloves relying on patent support for continuous iteration, precisely adapting to Africa's consumption upgrading trend and continuously enriching the supply of China-Africa trade products. Commercial going global cannot be separated from the support of the industry ecosystem. Founded in 2023, the Yiwu Cross-Border E-Commerce Association has now developed into a 5A-level social organization with more than 360 member units and annual sales exceeding 100 billion yuan, becoming an important platform for government-enterprise linkage, industrial coordination, and resource interconnection. Relying on "Zhengpai Youxuan · Global Goods Pool," the association links more than 300 industrial and trade factories and major sellers, paired with overseas warehouse resources, to reduce stocking and logistics costs for small and medium-sized merchants going global; through product selection salons, industry summits, and resource matchmaking meetings, it has facilitated 58 cooperation projects with a total value of more than 6 billion yuan, continuously promoting Yiwu enterprises from "products going global" to "brands going global." "Going global across borders is not a single link, but a whole-chain collaboration of platforms, supply chains, logistics, compliance, and channels," said Huang Liang, executive secretary-general of the Yiwu Cross-Border E-Commerce Association and COO of Zhengpai Cross-Border. He said the association has connected with dozens of mainstream cross-border platforms such as Amazon and Mercado Libre, helping enterprises lower the threshold for cross-border operations through incubation training, resource integration, and model innovation. As a Yiwu cross-border e-commerce service enterprise, Zhengpai Cross-Border has served more than 10,000 enterprises and trained 150,000 students, and has established cooperation with more than 50 cross-border e-commerce platforms. Between 2024 and 2026, its public-interest cross-border e-commerce training has benefited more than 80,000 people, cultivating a large number of new forces for Yiwu's cross-border trade with Africa. At Yiwu International Land Port E-Commerce City, more than 900 upstream and downstream e-commerce enterprises and more than 200 cross-border e-commerce enterprises are clustered for development, with 10,000 practitioners working here, forming a complete cross-border industrial ecosystem integrating product selection incubation, platform operations, livestream e-commerce, warehousing and fulfillment, and channel expansion, continuously empowering Yiwu merchants to deepen their presence in overseas emerging markets. Relying on a mature market foundation and cross-border ecosystem, in recent years Yiwu's cooperation with Africa has continued to improve and upgrade. Driven by the Africa-focused holding group, Yiwu's China-Africa trade is moving away from the traditional "one-way selling of goods" model, leaping from simple commodity trade to deeper, more systematic economic and trade cooperation such as overseas warehouse deployment, localized distribution, brand establishment, and channel development. A group of specialized and refined Africa-focused supply chain enterprises is emerging at an accelerated pace. Established in 2025, Yiwu China-Senegal Supply Chain Co., Ltd. targets Senegal, a core West African market, and has set up a physical showroom and standardized overseas warehouse in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Through offline real-scene displays, localized warehousing and distribution, and terminal channel connections, it effectively addresses the pain points of domestic factories and small and medium-sized merchants going global in Africa, such as weak channels, difficult implementation, and high costs. "What we want to do is not just deliver goods to Africa, but help Chinese enterprises truly enter the local market and take root there, building long-term and stable trade channels," Shi Meiping, chairman of Yiwu China-Senegal Supply Chain Co., Ltd., said in an interview. Having worked deeply in the African market for more than 20 years, she has a profound sense of the iterative upgrading of Africa's consumer market and is more focused on promoting the precise matching of Yiwu's high-quality supply chain with terminal demand in Africa, realizing a deep transformation from "products going global" to "customization on demand and brands taking root," and consolidating the economic and trade ties between Yiwu and the West African market. The "two-way journey" of global merchants Entering the Tengxin Logistics Yiwu Smart Warehousing Center, a busy and efficient scene of going-global operations comes into view. In the vast warehouse, intelligent equipment operates in an orderly manner, and warehousing data is collected and dynamically updated in real time, with inbound volume, sorting volume, pending orders, and overseas cargo volume clear at a glance; on-site intelligent equipment precisely sorts, automatically transfers, and neatly packs, and small commodities from the Yiwu market circulate in an orderly manner, with the entire automated, visualized, and intelligent operation proceeding in an orderly way. "In the past, a box of goods had to be weighed on a scale and measured manually with a ruler, all by hand; now with the fourth-generation intelligent automated warehouse in use, once goods pass through the equipment, all data can be transmitted back to the customer system in real time," Wang Jinping, customer service director of Tengxin Logistics, told reporters. This self-developed warehousing system has 41,200 bin locations and can accommodate various non-standard parcels of Yiwu small commodities. As a rapid-response warehouse, its cargo turnover efficiency has been greatly improved. According to reports, the smart warehouse's peak hourly outbound volume can reach 3,600 boxes, with a maximum of 34 containers shipped out in a single day, and overall warehousing operation efficiency is 35% higher than that of traditional warehouses; the 6,000-square-meter warehouse area requires only 24 employees to operate around the clock, compared with 60 people needed for a warehouse of the same scale in the past, significantly reducing labor costs. Relying on the service model of "nationwide cargo collection, Yiwu consolidation, full-container export, and overseas distribution," the company continues to provide stable cargo consolidation, warehousing, and shipping support for Yiwu's cross-border orders to Africa, enabling small commodities to cross mountains and seas and reach the African continental market. The vitality of the market is hidden in the endless stream of merchants and the constantly iterating supply of goods. Today's Yiwu is no longer just a distribution center for goods; more and more local merchants are moving from simply "selling goods" to brands going global; more and more African buyers are taking root here, seeking sources, negotiating, and connecting with industrial chain resources, forming a vivid pattern of two-way journeys and mutual exchange. From the rise of the Global Digital Trade Center to the continuous improvement of the cross-border e-commerce ecosystem, Yiwu is empowering China-Africa cooperation with normalized commercial exchanges, so that it endures and progresses steadily.