"It is time to stop paying 'tuition fees' for Chinese companies during their overseas investment," he said.

Proper due diligence mechanisms will help ensure the success of Chinese merger and acquisition deals in the African mining sector.

Zhejiang-based private mining company Huayou Cobalt Co Ltd first decided to invest in cobalt and copper mining, processing and refining plants in Africa in 2006.

Li Xiaodong, its vice-president, said the company made thorough investigations before committing investments in Africa.

"We started as a trading company, importing cobalt from Africa. After three years of preparation, we bought three mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo," Li said. It has now become China's biggest and the world's third-largest cobalt producer by production capacity.

China's demand for cobalt, an important raw material for batteries, has grown rapidly in past years, with about 90 percent of the demand being met through imports.

"The company's success depends on an accurate sense of the market and friendly bilateral ties between China and Africa," Li said.

During President Xi Jinping's visit to Africa in March 2013, he made a commitment to provide concessional loans worth $20 billion to the region by 2015, further reinforcing China's economic ties to the continent.

In addition to increasing private investors, there is another trend that China's investment in Africa is shifting from natural resources to other areas including infrastructure, telecommunications and manufacturing, said the AEI report.

In 2013, the State-owned China Machinery Engineering Corp signed a $127 million contract to build and expand power grids in six cities in Equatorial Guinea, and a $199 million contract to build a national power supply system.

In the same year, the company also won contracts to build two power plants in Nigeria for $621 million.

In telecommunications, ZTE Corp and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd have been building fixed-line and wireless telecom networks throughout the continent.

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