钢铁过剩的世界正将剩余产量输往缺乏防御的市场

1.1 Output has fallen since its 2021 peak while demand looks for a floor

World crude steel production peaked at 1,963 Mt in 2021, fell to about 1,889 Mt in 2022, recovered to 1,904 Mt in 2023 on the 2026 data vintage, and fell again to 1,886.8 Mt in 2024 and 1,849.4 Mt in 2025, a decline of 2.0% in the latest year [S02][S08]. The decline is a Chinese story. China produced 960.8 Mt in 2025, down 4.4% from 1,005.1 Mt in 2024, while India grew 10.4% to 164.9 Mt and became, by a wide margin, the fastest-growing large producer [S08]. The first eight months of 2026 continue the pattern: the 70 countries reporting monthly to worldsteel produced 1,225.2 Mt, 0.7% less than a year earlier, with China down 3.1% to 651.9 Mt, India up 6.0% to 115.9 Mt and Viet Nam up 29.1% to 20.6 Mt [S38].

Demand has fallen faster than output. World apparent steel use, measured as finished steel, declined from 1,778.5 Mt in 2023 to 1,751.1 Mt in 2024 and 1,718.2 Mt in 2025 [S02]. worldsteel’s April 2026 Short Range Outlook expects demand to bottom out: 1,724.1 Mt in 2026, a rise of 0.3%, and 1,762.0 Mt in 2027, a rise of 2.2%, with the world outside China growing 4.0% in 2027 [S39]. China’s own demand fell 7.1% to 796.0 Mt in 2025 on official data and is forecast to slip a further 1.5% in 2026 and to stay flat in 2027; India’s is forecast to grow 7.4% and 9.2% in the same years [S39]. The October 2026 edition of the outlook had not been published at the research cut-off [S39].

Source: worldsteel, World Steel in Figures 2026 and press release of 23 January 2026; Short Range Outlook, April 2026 [S02][S08][S39].

Two features of world demand matter for Cameroon. The first is composition: building and infrastructure account for 52% of world steel use, ahead of mechanical equipment (16%), automotive (12%) and metal products (10%) [S02]. Steel demand in a country at Cameroon’s stage of development is even more concentrated in construction, which is why Chapter 3 treats construction as the principal driver. The second is intensity: the world used 209 kg of finished steel per person in 2025, down from 231.7 kg in 2021 as Chinese use per head fell from 669.1 kg to 562.1 kg [S02]. Global averages are therefore falling for reasons that have nothing to do with Africa, where use per head is rising from a very low base (Chapter 2).

1.2 Growth outside China comes from India, the Middle East and Africa

Behind the global averages, demand is moving between regions. worldsteel expects India’s steel use to grow 7.4% in 2026 and 9.2% in 2027, after 8.0% in 2025, making it the largest single source of new demand [S39]. The Middle East and North Africa used 80.2 Mt in 2025; their demand is forecast to fall 4.5% in 2026, with the Middle East down 7.4% because of regional conflict, before rebounding 7.7% in 2027 [S39]. Africa, examined in Chapter 2, is forecast to grow 3.8% and 4.6% in the same two years [S39]. The result is that the world outside China is expected to grow 4.0% in 2027, while China’s own demand stays flat [S39].

The technology of steelmaking is shifting more slowly. Electric furnaces produced 30.3% of world crude steel in 2025, up from 29.1% in 2024, and world output of direct-reduced iron, the ore-based feed for electric furnaces, rose from 138.7 Mt in 2023 to 145.8 Mt in 2024 and 153.0 Mt in 2025 on worldsteel’s data (151.0 Mt on Midrex’s) [S02][S13]. Gas-based processes account for about 65% of direct reduction worldwide and coal-based kilns for about 35%; India and Iran are the largest producers [S13]. This matters for Cameroon because the growth of electric steelmaking raises worldwide demand for the iron units it depends on, scrap and direct-reduced iron, and because a future ore-based iron industry in Central Africa would compete in that market.

For a small importing country, the regional pattern has a practical consequence. The exporters that serve Africa are increasingly those with surplus capacity and limited access to protected markets: China, Indonesia, Russia and Türkiye in particular. Their export prices, not the prices of European or American mills, set the cost of steel delivered to Douala.

1.3 Excess capacity is structural, not cyclical

Capacity has not adjusted to weaker demand. The OECD Steel Committee estimated global crude steelmaking capacity at 2,547 Mt at the end of 2025, rising to 2,656 Mt by 2028 [S40]. Its Steel Outlook 2026 puts excess capacity, the difference between capacity and production, at 640 Mt in 2025, heading to 745 Mt by 2028, with capacity utilisation falling from 76% in 2025 to 74% or less and up to 138.8 Mt of new capacity (5.7%) added by 2028 against demand growth of about 0.9% a year [S09]. An earlier OECD estimate, cited in the European Union’s 2026 steel regulation, was 602 Mt in 2024 and 721 Mt by 2027 [S41]. China accounts for more than half of the excess [S42].

Source: OECD estimates as reported in Regulation (EU) 2026/1384 and by EUROMETAL/Platts (5 June 2026) [S41][S09]; Cameroon apparent use, industry estimate [S01]; ratio derived.

The persistence of the surplus is explained in part by state support. The OECD found that the median Chinese steel firm received about 15 times the subsidies, relative to assets, of producers elsewhere in 2024, against 10 times in 2023 [S43]. Capacity is also being rebuilt in a different technological form. Global Energy Monitor’s 2026 tracker counts 2,216 Mtpa of operating capacity in plants of at least 0.5 Mtpa, of which electric arc furnaces represent 34%; electric furnaces account for 50% of capacity in development and 71% of capacity under construction [S31]. The surplus is therefore not a problem that will fade as old blast furnaces close: new, efficient electric capacity is being added at the same time.

1.4 China’s exports set records, and semi-finished steel matters most for Cameroon

China exported 119.02 Mt of steel in 2025 on a customs basis, 7.5% more than the 111.1 Mt of 2024, itself 23.1% above 2023 [S10][S37]. Definitions matter: worldsteel counts 133.6 Mt of Chinese exports in 2025 (126.6 Mt net of imports) and the OECD, using Platts data, 131.2 Mt, or 41% of world steel exports [S02][S09]. World steel exports totalled 456.5 Mt in 2025, 26.4% of output [S02]. Whatever the measure, China alone exports more steel each year than the whole of Africa consumes.

For Cameroon the more relevant series is semi-finished steel. China exported 11.9 Mt of billets and other semis in the first ten months of 2025, 2.6 times the level of a year earlier and almost double the 6.3 Mt exported in the whole of 2024 [S37]. Chinese exports to member states of the African Union reached 13.78 Mt over the same ten months [S37]. Billets are exactly the product Cameroon’s re-rolling mills import (Chapter 4), and their price is set at the margin by this flow.

Source: GMK Center from Chinese customs data (14 January 2026; 24 December 2025; 8 September 2026) [S10][S37][S44]. The 2023 value is derived from the 2024 level and its reported growth of 23.1%.

There are signs of moderation. From 1 January 2026 China introduced export licensing for about 300 steel product types, including pig iron, semis, flat and long products, pipe and rail, with six-month licences [S45]. In January to August 2026 Chinese exports were 75.15 Mt, 3% less than a year earlier; in August alone they were 10.15 Mt at an average of US$722 per tonne [S44]. A slower pace of Chinese exports would not end the surplus, because the excess capacity described above remains, but it may shift the source of marginal supply towards other exporters such as Indonesia, Russia, Türkiye and the Gulf, several of which already supply Cameroon (Chapter 4).

1.5 Trade defence is closing the large markets

The response of importing countries has been a wave of trade defence. By October 2025, 62 countries had implemented 207 restrictions against steel products from China [S11]. Table 1.1 lists the measures that have the largest effect on where surplus steel can go.

The common thread is that the largest consuming markets outside Asia have made access conditional on quotas, high tariffs or proof of origin. The EU’s melt-and-pour rule, applied from October 2026, is designed to stop steel melted in one country from entering under another country’s quota after minor processing [S41]. Türkiye, one of the world’s largest rebar exporters and a supplier to Africa, saw its EU quota cut by up to 56%, about 3.5 Mt [S46]. Tonnes displaced from Europe and North America do not disappear; they are offered elsewhere, at lower prices.

1.6 Where the displaced tonnes go: Africa’s imports rose by 9 Mt in a year

The clearest evidence of diversion is in Africa’s own import statistics. The continent imported 23.9 Mt of finished and semi-finished steel in 2024, of which 13.8 Mt came from China; in 2025 it imported 32.9 Mt, of which 19.4 Mt came from China [S12][S02]. A rise of 9 Mt in one year, at a time when Africa’s own steel use rose by about 4.3 Mt, is consistent with surplus steel being placed in the few large markets that remain open [S02]. Chapter 2 examines the African picture in detail.

Steel-specific trade defence in Sub-Saharan Africa is rare. South Africa’s provisional safeguard on hot-rolled coil lapsed [S55]; North African producers such as Egypt and Algeria are protected by duties, minimum prices and import management [S57][S54]. Cameroon’s 2016 suspension of rebar imports is one of the few measures in Central Africa, and it covers only one product. It does not cover billets, which the country imports in large quantities, nor flat products or sections [S04][S56]. The effect, examined in Chapters 4 and 5, is a domestic industry that is protected at the finished-bar stage and fully exposed at the iron-unit stage, which suits re-rollers while billets are cheap and leaves the country dependent on imported metal.

1.7 Prices: cheap billets, firmer rebar

International prices reflect this structure. On 3 October 2026 billets were quoted at US$465 to 470 per tonne free on board (FOB) from China and US$470 to 480 FOB from Russia, and at US$515 to 525 delivered to Türkiye from the Commonwealth of Independent States; Turkish rebar for export was quoted at US$620 to 630 FOB [S22]. Iron ore, the main raw material of primary steel, averaged US$100.2 per dry tonne in 2025, down from US$120.6 in 2023, and the World Bank expects US$97 in 2026 and US$95 in 2027 [S58][S59]. Chapter 8 analyses these series and what they mean for a producer in Cameroon.

1.8 Implications for Cameroon and Central Africa

Three implications follow for the rest of this paper.

First, imported iron units will remain available and cheap while the surplus lasts. Billets at US$465 to 480 per tonne FOB, about US$570 to 650 once landed duty-paid in Cameroon (section 8.6), set the benchmark against which any Cameroonian iron unit, whether a billet melted from scrap, from imported direct-reduced iron or eventually from Cameroonian ore, must compete [S22]. A domestic melt shop is justified only if it can match that delivered cost with acceptable reliability, or if it offers something imports cannot: shorter lead times, lower working capital, consistent chemistry for downstream mills, and protection against freight and currency shocks.

Second, the absence of trade defence for semis and flat products in Central Africa is a structural feature, not an oversight to be corrected overnight. Policy options exist and are discussed in Chapter 10, but they must be consistent with Cameroon’s commitments in CEMAC, the African Continental Free Trade Area and the World Trade Organization, and with the interest of the many Cameroonian firms that buy steel as an input.

Third, the global cycle is likely to remain difficult until at least 2028, the horizon of the OECD’s capacity projection [S09]. Demand growth outside China, notably in India and Africa, is the main source of new tonnes, and Africa’s share of world steel use, 2.6% in 2025, is small but rising [S02]. A producer in Kribi will be one of the few new suppliers located inside the growing market rather than exporting to it, and the value of that position is examined in the chapters that follow.