More and more African countries take inspiration from China's development and its modernization path and are looking forward to learning from China and exploring the development models befitting their own national conditions, said African officials and business leaders attending just-concluded 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).
They also hope that Africa and China will deepen cooperation in green development and blue economy in the future.
The 2024 FOCAC summit, held from Wednesday to Friday, brought together leaders from China and African countries under the theme "Joining Hands to Advance Modernization and Build a High-Level China-Africa Community with a Shared Future."
To jointly advance modernization with Africa, Chinese President Xi Jinping, in his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the 2024 FOCAC summit on Thursday, proposed 10 partnership action plans to be implemented in the next three years, covering areas of mutual learning among civilizations, trade prosperity, industrial chain cooperation, connectivity, development cooperation, health, agriculture and livelihoods, people-to-people and cultural exchanges, green development and common security.
"If you look at most of the African economies, I think they are SME-based and also supporting SMEs. It's quite big and also looking at issues to do with supply chain analysis. I think for us, most of our trade coming from China is based on machinery and equipment. So if we can get more of that into our country, we can modernize ourselves. So modernization actually is quite key for us, so we are quite grateful for that plan and also the resources that have been put in place to make sure that we support the same plan," said Allan Majuru, CEO of ZimTrade, the national trade development and promotion organization of Zimbabwe.
At present, China has implemented hundreds of clean energy and green development projects across Africa, such as the Garissa Solar Power Plant in Kenya and the De Aar wind power project in South Africa.
"The best way of doing that is through the relationship of business. We will benefit immensely from the technology advances that China is embarked upon, tried and tested in the space of energy, the renewable [energy, such as] solar, wind, how it connects to the grid, smart grid, the manufacturing of the inputs. Some of the entities are participating in some of the biggest wind projects in the country," said Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, minister for Electricity and Energy of South Africa.
In recent years, China has put forward proposals such as the Vision for Maritime Cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, the Principles for Blue Partnership and the Belt and Road Blue Cooperation Initiative, providing vast opportunities for the development of many sectors of African countries.
The blue partnership between China and Africa covers many industries such as marine fishery, coastal and maritime tourism.
"You (China) have over 7,000 islands. Seychelles has 115 islands. We do not have one single coastline. We have many coastlines around the many islands. What we can do from China [is to] learn from experience - how to manage the coastline, how big it is; how to manage the sea, the ocean that's around the islands in the territory. And look at, for example, also how China pushes cultural development also in its tourism, how that blends into what we offer our visitors," said Sylvestre Radegonde, minister for Foreign Affairs and Tourism of Seychelles.
Inaugurated at its first Ministerial Conference in Beijing in October 2000 with the goals of responding to the challenges emerging from economic globalization, and seeking common development, FOCAC now has 55 members comprising China, the 53 African countries that have diplomatic relations with China, and the African Union Commission.
The 2024 FOCAC summit is the largest diplomatic event hosted by China in recent years, with the highest attendance of foreign leaders.
Over the past 24 years since the FOCAC was established, bilateral trade volume between China and Africa has increased by nearly 26 times, and China has been Africa's largest trading partner for 15 years in a row.
Official data showed the economic trade volume between China and Africa topped 282 billion U.S. dollars last year, hitting a record high for two consecutive years.
Since 2017, China's imports of services from Africa have grown at an average annual rate of 20 percent, creating nearly 400,000 jobs for Africa every year.
China's development inspires Africa's modernization path: officials, business leaders
