New Starting Point for China-Africa Cooperation

Fifth FOCAC Ministerial Conference: A New Starting Point

The Fifth Ministerial Conference of the FOCAC, which took place in Beijing from July 19 to 20, 2012, assessed implementation of the follow-up actions of the forum’s Fourth Ministerial Meeting in 2009. It also reviewed and adopted the Fifth Ministerial Meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Beijing Declaration and the Beijing Action Plan of the Fifth Ministerial Meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (2013-2015), so mapping out China-Africa cooperation over the next three years.

President Hu Jintao announced at the opening ceremony new measures in five priority areas, which include investment and financing, the stepping-up of assistance to bring the benefits of development to the African people, the African integration process, people-to-people exchanges, and peace and stability in Africa. Relevant measures cover a broader scope and involve more dramatic action. Their focus is on livelihood, employment, trans-national and trans-regional infrastructure construction and matters closely related to people’s lives.

Livelihood and employment were key words at FOCAC meetings and in the outcome documents. President Hu stated explicitly that China would expand assistance to Africa and bring the benefits of development to the African people. Minister of Commerce Chen Deming said that China would expand investment in and cooperation with Africa, transfer to it industries of comparative advantage to create more job opportunities, and extend the “Made in Africa” value-added chain.

Africa is regarded as a young continent, because people between the ages of 15 and 35 account for 35 percent of the total African population, according to the 2011 Report on African Youth released in April 2012 by the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). Unemployment among the youth, however, has impeded the African economic take-off. Approximate statistics show that 11 percent of young people in the sub-Saharan region and 24 percent of youth in Northern Africa are unemployed. This high rate of unemployment challenges both social and political stability.

African countries, therefore, hope for assistance that will increase employment and improve livelihood – issues that have been the focus of China’s business and commercial work in Africa. Over the last three years, China has almost doubled its volume of assistance to Africa, with emphasis on improving livelihood, poverty reduction and alleviation, disaster prevention and mitigation, and capacity building. Completed aid projects include schools, hospitals, roads, bridges and water supply projects. In addition to sending agricultural technologists and medical teams, China has also trained 40,000 or more personnel in various sectors.

Besides giving emergency food aid to famine-stricken countries such as those in the Horn of Africa, the Chinese government has also established a group of agricultural demonstration centers and about 100 clean energy projects to help Africa cope with food security and climate change. The Chinese Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone in Zambia, for example, is China’s first overseas economic and trade cooperation area in Africa. Since its establishment in February 2007, investment in infrastructure has accumulated to US $130 million, sales income has hit US $4.35 billion, tax revenue has reached about US $500 million, and over 12,000 jobs have been created. The China-Zambia Friendship Hospital is the only hospital in Africa independently run by Chinese, and has developed into Zambia’s second largest. It has significantly raised the level of health care in the region.

Cognizant of the importance of infrastructure to economic development, China has constructed many roads and bridges in Africa. As its own development experience implies, “to get rich, first build a road.”

China declared at the Fifth FOCAC Ministerial Conference its intent to become deeply involved in construction of Africa’s infrastructure. China has promised US $20 billion in credit to African countries in three years’ time – double that of 2009. China is also expected to build both trans-national and trans-regional projects that will give full play to the relative advantages of Chinese companies and boost African integration. Thus far, China has built more than 2,000 km of railways, 3,000 km of roads, more than 100 schools and 60 or more hospitals. Debt relief stands at RMB 20 billion.

As of April 2012, China had directly invested US $15.3 billion in Africa, as compared to less than US $500 million a decade ago. The Chinese run more than 2,000 companies in 50-odd African countries, covering trade, processing, resource development, transportation and agriculture.

China-Africa Cooperation: A South-South Cooperation Model

Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the United Nations, highly praised the cooperation between China and Africa as a model for South-South cooperation at the Fifth FOCAC Ministerial Conference. The new type strategic partnership between China, the largest developing country, and Africa, which has the most developing countries, goes far beyond a bilateral relationship, as apparent in its strengthening of South-South cooperation and promotion of common prosperity in the developing world.

The Fifth FOCAC Ministerial Conference took place under the backdrop of the global financial crisis that swept African countries and turmoil in Northern African countries. The African economy has undergone steady growth since the mid-1990s, with an annual average growth of around six percent. But the impact of the global financial crisis resulted in a sharp decline in 2009 to below two percent. Having benefited from the presence in Africa of emerging countries such as China, the African economy bottomed out and achieved a growth of 4.6 percent in 2010. Unexpected social and political turmoil the next year, however, brought the Northern African economy almost to the point of stagnation, and growth over the entire African continent fell to 2.7 percent. When Europe became mired in debt crisis and growth of the U.S. economy faltered, African countries hoped to maintain sustainable growth by strengthening their economic relationships with China and other emerging Asian economies, and so to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals.

China and Africa can indeed learn from each other and cooperate in terms of resources, market, capital, technologies and experience, to achieve common development and improve the level of South-South cooperation. In the last few years in particular, China and Africa have expanded human resources development and cooperation through personnel training and capacity building. This has invigorated sustainable development of the African economy and opened a new path of South-South cooperation.

HE WENPING is a research fellow and director of the Office of African Studies of the Institute of West Asian and African Studies, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.