Chinese New Yorker George Qian lives part of the year in the Senegalese capital "for business". He is supervising the construction of five new stores on the boulevard that will be rented out to Chinese shopkeepers.

"The Chinese are here to help the economy not to hurt (it)," said Qian who heads the Senegal Chinese Business Association and owns several construction material factories here.

He estimates that there are some 212 shops around Boulevard General de Gaulle where keen Dakar shoppers can by clothes and brightly coloured sandals for less than 2,000 CFA francs (three euros, four dollars).

At the start of the millennium "there was a lone Chinese woman who sold spring rolls under that tree over there. Now it's the entire road," Senegalese pharmacy worker Paul Diouf, 51, told AFP.

"The Chinese have no trouble integrating even if they don't speak Wolof (the local language) or French. They provide work for the young people," Diouf said.

The pharmacy worker, like many interviewed in this neighbourhood is positive about the Chinese presence, however elsewhere in Dakar Senegalese shopkeepers complain that the Chinese competition is putting them out of business.

The volume of trade between the two countries is "between 150 million and 200 million dollars a year" mostly from Chinese exports to Senegal, the Chinese embassy in Dakar said.

George Qian estimates the number of Chinese immigrants in the West African country as around 2,000 including residents and people who come temporarily for government projects.

Beijing and Dakar re-established their diplomatic ties in October of 2005 after a period of 10 years when Senegal decided to recognise China's rival Taiwan, where the Nationalists fled after losing a civil war in 1949.

Since to return of Senegal to the Chinese fold Beijing has stepped up aid, loans and cooperation projects here.

In January China announced that it would extend aid worth 8.9 million euros (11.5 billion dollars) for sports, cultural and sanitation projects.

Behind Dakar's railway station two cranes tower over the foundations of the new 1,800-seat national theatre, which Beijing is financing. A big sign in Chinese and French shows the building as it will eventually look after the Senegalese and Chinese workers of the Chinese Complant company are done.

"The Chinese presence is seen more and more," Issa Sall, editor of the Senegalese Nouvel Horizon current affairs magazine told AFP.

"The companies work for example in the construction and infrastructure sectors like Henan-Chine, who came here to build a stadium in the 1980s and stayed on for other business. The company recently participated in building a part of the Dakar highway," he said.

"In Senegal this is only the start" of Chinese investments said Chinese ambassador Lu Shaye. He gave the example of Senegal Peche, a Sino-Senegalese fishing company and another Chinese firm which is investing in cultivation of sesame seeds.

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