BRUSSELS, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- China's growth and close economic ties with Africa are affecting the ability of the United States and the European Union to influence politics on the continent, experts say.

Europe became aware of its new secondary role in Africa during the latest round of trade negotiations at the EU-Africa summit last month. The EU, which had grown accustomed to getting what it wants from Africa, was fiercely rebuffed by the majority of African nations that refused the terms proposed by the European Commission.

The reason African countries could now stand up to their former colonizers was an alternative and more attractive Chinese market, which has been offering African countries better prices and more investment.

"China's own economic growth has allowed it, and forced it, to accelerate engagement with Africa pretty much across the board in a way that the EU and the U.S. just don't," said Fredrik Erixon, director of the European Center for International Political Economy, an economic think tank in Brussels.

Africa supplies a third of China's oil, and trade between China and Africa has risen by 6,000 percent since 1990, according to Erixon.