Standing among some 30 people outside the Chinese embassy in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, Iyare Natama awaits with eager hope that he can obtain a visa to fulfill his first-ever trip to the Far Eastern nation.

Natama, an Abuja-based computer dealer, plans to visit Guangzhou in south China to purchase some laptop computers and accessories for his firm, Desire Target Trading Co..

"I visit Europe a lot but computer products there are too expensive," Natama says. "Now I want to explore the Chinese market to see if the price can be more reasonable."

"Many people have been there and are talking about the development in China. I want to go and see by myself and to explore the opportunity," he says.

Natama is indeed not an early bird in this west African nation. Tens of thousands of business-savvy Nigerians have already gone to China, bringing home containers of cloth, shoes, cell phones and machines to satisfy needs of Africa's most populous market.

"China is becoming an economic power in the world. This creates a lot of business opportunities for African traders. That's why I want to go to China," says Emokah Chidolue, another visa applicant.

The Chinese embassy in Abuja issued some 6,000 visas last year, and this figure in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial center where a Chinese consulate general operates, could even triple, says Zhang Hongliang, an embassy official.

Ghana, another west African nation, also witnesses a surge of business travelers to China in the past three years, where more than 7,000 visas to China have been issued this year, compared with some 2,000 and 3,000 visas issued per year before 2003, according to the Chinese embassy in Accra.

"The traffic of African privates to China is increasing so rapidly, even small traders, more and more, are going to China to trade, to buy from China," Ghanaian President John Kufuor said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua recently.

Besides business people, African leaders are paying more visits to China to negotiate for closer cooperation economically, politically and culturally. "China-Africa relationship is being lifted to an all-high level of cooperation," he said.

Kufuor will soon join some 40 African heads of state or government and their Chinese counterparts to the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) from Nov. 4-5, with aims to blueprint the future of China-Africa partnership after 50 years of traditional friendship and cooperation.

During the meeting, Chinese and African leaders will "explore the way to boost a new type of China-Africa strategic partnership featuring political equality and mutual trust, economic win-win cooperation and culture exchange and mutual emulation," says Xu Jianguo, the Chinese ambassador to Nigeria.

Along with China's economic takeoff in the past two decades, trade and investment now emerge as a prominent factor in bilateral relations.

In the past six years, China-Africa trade volume has increased from 10.6 billion U.S. dollars to 39.8 billion dollars.

With rich resources, huge market potential, technical know-how and capital, Africa and China can "talk openly and frankly to each other, with a view to explore better chances of getting benefits both on the African side and on the Chinese side, .. I'm talking about the win-win," Kufuor said.

As individual traders like Natama are keen to outsource Chinese goods, governments of both China and Africa put focus on multi- billion dollar projects that will give impetus to the development of Africa, still the poorest continent in the world.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has announced an 8.3- billion-dollar program to upgrade the country's railway network, which will be implemented by a Chinese company.

The two countries will also conduct further cooperation to help boost Nigeria's electricity-generating capacity and telecommunications, as well as China's exploration of oil in Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer, according to Nigerian and Chinese officials.

In a bustling street in Akwa commercial district of Douala, the largest port and business center of Cameroon, Bertin Pategou knows almost all Chinese business people who open shops, manufacture traveling cases or sell Chinese food because his company specializes in dealing with customs procedures and currently over 80 percent of his customers are Chinese.

"Chinese people bring a lot of business opportunities to us. They bring cheap goods so poor people have new clothes and they give jobs to young people. My business also benefits from them," says Pategou, who is also the head of a private school.

"I'm thinking about a plan to teach our children the Chinese language because more Chinese business people are coming to Cameroon. If our children can speak Chinese, I'm sure they will get more benefits from China's development," Pategou says.

Source: Xinhua