Building brand South Africa in China

According to Matola, previously it was China that initiated its publicity in African countries to promote its business, but now the establishment of an office in Beijing shows that South Africa has become the first African country to have a specific agency to brand the country in China.

"It's very important for us to create a strong awareness of the South African brand in China, just as it's important for China to do the same in Africa and South Africa," he said. "We are building a lot of relationships in business, trade, FDI (foreign direct investment)and other areas. We also need to move to establish greater understanding at a people-to-people level, so intercultural relations are crucial to BSA in Beijing."

South African companies in China previously kept a low profile and did not do their business through the media, but some still did very well, Matola says.

According to Matola, the South African company Naspers bought a 46 percent share of China's Tencent Holdings Ltd in 2001, which is now the fourth-largest Internet company in the world after Google Inc, Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc.

"Part of our role now is to build a greater awareness of these facts to encourage more South African corporations to do business in China in the long run," he says.

Matola also believes person-to-person contact has a role to play in developing business links between the two regions.

"I have been to China many times on business but, after a while, I took my family there for personal reasons. Now we want to go there again because we learned so much about the country."

He says if more Chinese people could have a chance to visit his country, tourism and business would grow hand-in-hand.

With several offices in Europe and the United States, BSA has a central strategy to promote South Africa as an ideal business destination, but different sectors in different regions are approached in different ways.

"We stress the strategic importance of South Africa on this continent. In the early days we promoted it as the gateway to or the first investment point of Africa. But now it has shifted. We are saying South Africa is a very important hub from a business perspective - not only for logistics but also for providing a safe and secure investment environment into the continent, because we have a very strong and well-established legal system, good financial services and regulations."

He also stresses that South Africa's leading position in terms of investment in Africa. He says 57 percent of growth and investment in the continent comes from South Africa. This adds to its attraction to investors.

"You can't ignore South Africa if you want to invest in Africa. We don't speak on behalf of the continent, but we raise issues that affect the continent at multinational forums because we are part of the continent," he says.