On Pate Island, off the coast of northern Kenya, there are light-skinned Africans with Chinese features, fragments of ancient Chinese porcelain, and even a place named “New Shanga”. All lend weight to a local story that shipwrecked sailors from the fleet of Zheng He, the 15th-century Chinese explorer, settled on the island many years before Columbus set foot in the US.

Whether or not there are descendants of the great Chinese helmsman’s crew in Kenya, records show that huge ships reached the east African coast more than 500 years ago, swapping Chinese treasures for exotica such as ivory, ostriches and zebras. Indeed, there is a long if tentative history of contact between China and Africa, cemented under Mao Zedong in the 1960s with anti-colonial solidarity and the construction of engineering works, notably the 1,860km Tanzam railway linking Zambia with the Tanzanian coast.

In the past 15 years, however, the level of engagement by Chinese state-owned enterprises, political leaders, diplomats and entrepreneurs has put centuries of previous contact in the shade.