$60bn of Chinese assistance is indeed unprecedented. A heady cocktail of debt relief, aid and preferential loans offered by the Chinese President Xi Jinping has nailed China's commitment to African development.
But make no mistake. This is about business. China is taking a gamble on future African growth by unlocking the "bottlenecks" to development, as President Xi described them.
These include a lack of infrastructure, skilled personnel and access to funds. But what I sense African nations need more than anything else from conversations with African businessmen and potential foreign investors, is job creation for - as one minister put it - "a young population living in an aging world".
That requires investment in education and structural reforms.