“The visit and the China-Africa summit definitely symbolise that relations have reached a new and historic high”, said He Wenping, an expert on Africa at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Themed “Africa-China Progressing Together: Win-Win Cooperation for Common Development”, the summit is scheduled to conclude Saturday with the release of a declaration and an action plan.
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Mugabe said China’s trade with Africa was set to rise from $220 billion a year ago to $400 billion in 2020 and would continue to rise rapidly through the Continental Free Trade Agreement and the Tripartite Free Trade Agreement which Africa was establishing.
China will be providing $60 billion over the next three years to fund development in Africa despite a recent fall in investment. China’s foreign minister Wang Yi said on Thursday that China-Africa cooperation is about “making sure that this world will be fairer, more secure and more inclusive”.
He said that China and the African continent each made up a third of the world’s population, bringing with it the possibility of new markets and production possibilities.
“China is still very active in Africa”, Deborah Brautigan of the US-based China Africa Research Institute, said.
South Africans nervous that China is “taking over” might be interested to learn that Chinese bankers and businesspeople are as eager as their counterparts in South Africa to see the relationship between the two countries evolve into a more equal partnership. “I don’t think we need to panic about fluctuations in trade volumes”, China’s special representative on African Affairs Zhong Jianhua said.
“The width and depth of the relations between China and Africa have grown so much that the African continent now belongs to one of Beijing’s top strategic considerations”, Shu Yunguo, director of the Center for African Studies at Shanghai Normal University, said by phone before the summit.
Today and tomorrow more than 40 African heads of state will talk trade and investment with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Johannesburg.
South Africa has been the recipient of the largest share of Chinese investment in Africa, seeing US$9.17 billion over the past decade.
Some Africans are wary of strings attached to China’s apparent openhandedness.
“We are keen to explore co-operation with China to ensure the long term viability of African mining”, South Africa President Jacob Zuma told the summit.
The money will be used for Africa’s industrialization, agricultural programs, development of small and medium enterprises, poverty alleviation programs, education and health, among others.
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“They do want to change the infrastructure and they do want to change the supply chain in African nations so that they can be more effective in delivering their natural resources”, says Acemoglu.
