Fund keen to assist Africa growth

ADDIS ABABA - China-Africa Development Fund (CADFund), which has already invested on over 70 projects in Africa, said it is speeding up investment activities on the African continent, including in manufacturing, infrastructure, and agriculture among others.

Speaking at the African High-Growth Markets Summit on Monday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Wang Yong, CADFund Vice-President, noted that the Fund has already invested on 72 projects in Africa covering about 30 different countries.

The two-day summit has been designed for business leaders and investors looking to understand how to tackle both the obstacles of investing in emerging African economies and of reaching consumers, entrepreneurs and policy-makers with a stake in driving growth in Africa, according to the organizers.

Wang said CADFund has invested on three projects in Ethiopia including in cement, tannery, and glass factories with a total investment of nearly 200 million U.S. dollars.

Wang also said the consumer market in Africa is growing. "As we discussed this morning, there is very fast growing for middle class on African continent which means growing our consumer market, " said the Vice-President, "So, we would like to speed up more investment in manufacturing structure, which can meet the demand of the local community, and also can reduce the foreign currency spending to import commercial goods."

"On the other hand we would like to pay attention more to those value added projects so that we can export more commodities from the projects we invested in Africa," he added.

Asked about the sectors more appropriate for China-Africa cooperation, Wang said infrastructure, agriculture, and industry parks are more compatible for the cooperation between the two sides as these sectors are more crucial in terms of increasing the capacity of economies of the African continent, which in turn benefit the Fund.

Alasdair Ross, Global Product Director of the Economist Group, the organizer, told reporters that China is a key player in the global stage and also in Africa.

"China has tremendous role to play in providing an encouragement investment money but also taking good opportunity, good investment projects to get involved in," he said.