China’s president has pledged $60bn to development in Africa, as part of what Chinese and African leaders called “win-win cooperation”. One of the saddest tragedies in most Africans is that we lost faith in ourselves, and stopped believing in ourselves, that we own the capacity to change our situation.
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President Xi Jinping made the announcement on Friday to rousing applause from an audience that included South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and African Union Commission Chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
It is in the interest of both sides that China and Africa will strengthen unity and cooperation and achieve common development, Xi said.
“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”. Ralebitso said this came about as a result of colonialisation of African countries.
To that end, Xi said, China stands ready to play a constructive role in promoting political settlement of Africa’s hot-spot issues, beef up cooperation with African countries on peace-keeping capability, and share its experience on reform, opening-up and economic boom with them.
Chinese online media have already published reports about President Buhari calling China a strategic and dependable partner.
Malawi President Peter Mutharika has said his government remains focused and committed to all development pacts and arrangements it has with China as it is the best way of improving local livelihoods through development of infrastructure and strengthening of institutions.
The big package announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping covers the areas of industrialization, agricultural modernization, infrastructure, financial services, green development, trade and investment facilitation, poverty reduction and public welfare, public health, people-to-people exchanges, and peace and security. “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.
The trip will be welcome after the economic downturn forced China to slash investment in Africa by more than 40 percent earlier this year. As a nation, we are proud to note that the FOCAC Beijing Action Plan (2013-2015) is on course,”Mutharika said”.
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The leaders expressed appreciation to China for its valuable contribution to Africa’s development, stressing that the continuous development of China will further benefit African nations since their cooperation is established on the basis of equality and win-win principle.
