At the opening ceremony on Friday of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Summit, Xi said the funding plan was announced to ensure that China rolls out 10 concrete plans for cooperation in the next three years to help boost African development.
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China’s President Xi Jinping on Friday pledged $60 billion in financing for development across Africa, aiming to reaffirm his commitment to the continent even as slowing growth in the world’s second-biggest economy stokes economic turmoil here.
Whilst China is pouring financial assistance into Africa, a South African foreign ministry official, Ghulam Hoosein Asmal told AFP ahead of the conference: “This is not an aid conference, it’s a partnership conference”.
Early in his speech, Xi noted that China and Africa were “comrades in arms in the quest for liberation and freedom, at the height of colonialism and apartheid”.
China’s broader trade relationship with Africa has grown even more rapidly, to $222 billion last year, a record that made China the continent’s top trade partner for the sixth straight year.
China will strengthen its cooperation with Africa in the fight against violent extremism and would not interfere with the political choices of countries in the continent, Jinping said.
“We will implement the 10-point plan with Africa in the next three years”, President Xi said during the Johannesburg FOCAC summit which he is co-chairing with South African President Jacob Zuma.
Meanwhile, overall trade between South Africa and China dropped three percent, which meant China’s exports to South Africa had risen and so had South Africa’s trade deficit.
Reuters reported that Western diplomat spoke of his skepticism regarding the deal; “it is hard to tell what the deals involve beyond the headlines”. Mr. Gao also stressed that e-commerce, new energy and finance and push for a more active role in Africa’s aviation and tourism sectors – areas of growing Chinese strengths – will be priority sectors in the future. The Chinese leader didn’t specify which of Africa’s more than 50 countries would receive the aid.
China has also stuck to its tradition of non-intervention in local politics, a move often criticised by the West as turning a blind eye to human rights violations but welcomed by its African partners such as Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who is also the current African Union Chairman, also addressed the summit.
The Chinese government will also cancel outstanding debts for Africa’s least developed countries in the form of zero interest loans that mature at the end of 2015, he said.
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Xi emphasized that some of the main aims of the $60 billion plan is to help accelerate African industrialization, modernize agriculture and enable African countries to gain independent and sustainable development.
