Beijing's growth fuels continent's economic development

After the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit in South Africa in December, the focus has squarely been on China's strategies to sustain its relationship with Africa. As the fastest-growing economy, China has become an assertive power and a leading economic investor on the continent.

Its influence in Africa grew meteorically after the launch of FOCAC in 2000 as a special framework by Beijing to engage the continent. The Sino-African relationship is founded on four basic principles: sincerity and equality, consolidating solidarity and mutual trust, jointly pursuing inclusive development, and promoting inventive practical cooperation.

Over the years, Chinese trade investment in Africa has fast-tracked from $10 billion to $220 billion. At least 2,000 Chinese companies are said to be investing in various sectors in Africa including electronics, mining, agriculture, telecommunications, infrastructure, media, finance and transportation.

China is involved in some of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken on the continent. A case in point is construction of the Mombasa-Kigali Standard Gauge Railway. The section from Mombasa to Nairobi, covering 471.65 km, is expected to be finished in 2017 and then extend to Uganda and Rwanda.

This railway project has created 25,000 jobs for Kenyans, and once it is completed will save 40 percent of the current transportation costs, thus boosting regional competitiveness. It has also created a platform for skills transfer and training useful for future industrialization in Kenya and the region. Two technical training schools have already been launched.

Experts concur that the project will boost trade and investment across East Africa and beyond. This is in addition to speeding up the regional integration process that has been on governments' to-do list for a long time.

To shore up the continent's capacity, both private and state-owned enterprises have offered training opportunities to 30,173 personnel. Since 2012, these workers have been trained at prestigious Chinese institutions, while another 15,126 pursued higher learning under scholarship programs in 2013 and 2014.

Moreover, health has also been a top priority on China's agenda. Forty-three Chinese medical teams are stationed in 42 African countries, with 1,771 Chinese medical workers sent to Africa since 2012. During the Ebola pandemic in West Africa, China responded swiftly by providing four rounds of emergency assistance worth more than $110 million.

To deepen inclusive growth, exchanges have been conducted under the frameworks of initiatives such as China-Africa People-to-People Friendly Action, China-Africa Joint Research and Exchange Plan and China-Africa Think Tanks 10+10 Partner Plan.

These campaigns have recruited nearly 300 young Chinese volunteers to provide services in more than 20 African countries.

Moreover, China's giant outbound tourism sector has seen more than 3 million Chinese citizens choose Africa as a holiday destination since 2012.

Conversely, Sino-African relations have become symbiotic over time, with China progressively turning to Africa as a source of energy reserves and raw materials to fuel its expanding economy, as well as new markets for Chinese products.

But as factories have slowed down, so too has trade, which has consequently affected commodity prices. Recently, we have seen economic slowdowns in countries such as Nigeria, Angola and Ghana that for a long time were deemed oil-dependent. These economies are now strategizing on diversifying their economies to cushion against such external shocks.

Africa is therefore looking at how ongoing partnerships with China can support the strengthening of legal and regulatory institutions. This would not only encourage the re-emergence of the manufacturing sector, which has been on idle for a long time, but also stimulate intra-Africa trade that many experts have been campaigning for. It is also time to fast-track the planned relocation of Chinese industries to Africa.

All this notwithstanding, China-Africa relations are bound to expand and consolidate. China is operating from the ideology that a better Africa is a better world.

The author is a policy analyst with the Africa Policy Institute, a pan-African think tank in Nairobi. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 03/11/2016 page10)