Chinese President Xi Jinping will on Friday address a summit of 40 African leaders in Johannesburg, with a host of major deals set to underline China’s commitment to the continent despite a sharp fall in investment.
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Xi Jinping at China-Africa co-operation forum.
“Industrialisation evokes issues of infrastructure, issues of an enabling environment and I think it’s along those lines that Zimbabwe as indeed the entire African continent would like to see more cooperation with China, more in terms of assistance in infrastructure development”.
But it’s a partnership that hasn’t always been described as equal – with China accused of plundering Africa’s rich resources.
Representing South African businesses, Black Business Council Chief Executive Mohale Ralebitso said the forum was important as it enabled participation of business leaders, academics and senior government officials from Africa and China.
Experts on Saturday hailed China’s decision to strengthen its cooperation with Africa through a rollout of 10 major China-Africa cooperation plans and an offer of 60 billion US dollars of funding support.
He specifically lauded China for the vision behind the establishment of FOCAC as a platform for higher level Africa-China relationship.
Chinese online media have already published reports about President Buhari calling China a strategic and dependable partner. “China has put forward the two centenary goals and the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee has proposed the 13th Five-Year Programme”, he said. “During the upcoming summit, leaders of China and Africa will gather in South Africa to discuss the ways to further align China and Africa’s development strategies and map out the new blueprint for China-Africa cooperation”.
This amount is three times the aid package which China presented to Africa at the last Focac conference in 2012 in Beijing.
President Xi’s initiatives on South-South cooperation and China-Africa ties meet the need of African countries, they said, noting that they are looking forward to strengthening cooperation with China in areas such as industrialization, agricultural modernization, infrastructure construction, digital economy, regional integration, education, people-to-people exchanges, peace-keeping and security.
It would also include $10 billion to boost African capacities. But perhaps one of the biggest challenges African countries face is youth unemployment and leaders are under pressure to come up with development plans which create more jobs.Zuma added that, given that history, it was only natural that Africa has developed a win-win partnership for development and progress with China over the years.
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China’s pledge “is not enough, but it’s a good start”, he said.
