China-Africa Co-operation: News and Discussions

[TaiShang]

Chinese economy remains major powerhouse for Africa's growth
February 4, 2016

The Chinese economy may be slowing down in its industrial and manufacturing sectors, but the growth in its consumption and services sector is still adequate to push growth in African countries which depend on trade with China, analysts said Wednesday.

Jonathan Stichbury, the East Africa CEO of Pine Bridge Investments, a financial services advisory and wealth management firm, said despite the talk of a Chinese economic slowdown, the 6.9 percent growth rate recorded by China in 2015 still remains much higher by the Asian regional standards.

"The slowdown in the industrial and manufacturing sectors, along with the over-capacity issues, has been widely reported. The consumption and services segments of the economy, however, have been growing rapidly, with the services now making up more than 50 percent of China's Gross Domestic Product (GDP)," Stichbury told Xinhua in an interview.

Economic growth in Africa is expected to increase to 4.4 percent in 2016 from 3.7 percent in 2015. This is based on increased public investment, services sector growth and increased trade ties with China.

Analysts particularly see the 60 billion U.S. dollars Chinese pledge for multi-faceted cooperation with Africa over the next three years as a major growth driver for Africa.

The financing deal was announced at the China-Africa Summit in Johannesburg in December 2015

"The source of the slowdown is that China is currently in transition phase. It is moving from an economy dependent on the manufacturing sector to one that is dependent on the services sector," said Maurice Oduor, Investment Manager at Cytonn Investment, a regional investment and advisory services firm in Nairobi.

It is likely that China will reach a soft-landing where the economy will see medium-high growth, and the process will take place as it moves to expand domestic consumption," he added.

At an average growth rate of 6.9 percent, China's output a year is still the size of the Turkish economy and almost the size of all the African economies combined, according to Adam Elhiraika, the Director of the Micro-Economic Division at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Addis Ababa.

While the Eurozone crisis has been responsible for the most widely felt global trade slowdown in 2015, the slowdown of the Chinese economy is associated with weak demand for merchandise.

China accounted for 12 percent of the global merchandise exports and 10 percent of the imports, according the UN outlook report 2016, which measures economic performance every six months.

China remains the top export destination for 29 countries, 13 of which are African countries.

"China has grown to become Africa's single largest trading partner. We have seen trade between China and Africa grow more than 10 times over the past decade," Stichbury said.

"It is safe to say that China is having a substantial impact on Africa's economy," he added.

In East Africa, the Chinese impact on Kenya's infrastructure is a major source of economic growth. Chinese companies have been engaged in the building of roads and railway lines to improve the efficiency of the Kenyan economy, Oduor noted.

 

[艹艹艹]

China puts $46 billion into Africa's economy
By LiXiaokun and Ren Qi (China Daily) 09:21, July 30, 2016

Beijing's cooperation with Africa has been dominated by commercial deals instead of aid inthe past, with $46 billion in direct Chinese investment and commercial loans having beensigned since December, Chinese officials said.[Wang Zhuangfei/China Daily]

Officials from both sides meet in Beijing to discuss achievements since December summit

Beijing's cooperation with Africa has been dominated by commercial deals instead of aid inthe past, with $46 billion in direct Chinese investment and commercial loans having beensigned since December, Chinese officials said.

"At present, Chinese aid to Africa makes up only a very little part of our cooperation. ...Investment cooperation has been the main avenue of China-Africa cooperation," ForeignMinister Wang Yi said on Friday.

Wang made the remarks to reporters on the sidelines of a meeting in Beijing on deliveringwhat was agreed on at the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-AfricaCooperation.

More than 100 ministerial officials from China and Africa attended the meeting.

On Thursday alone, Wang said, companies from China and Africa signed 64 agreementsworth about $19 billion at a seminar in Beijing on China-Africa business cooperation.

The deals included direct investment and commercial loans worth $16.7 billion, accountingfor 85 percent of the total volume, Wang said.

In December, President Xi Jinping announced at the Johannesburg Summit in South Africa10 major China-Africa cooperation plans for the next three years, backed by $60 billion,including interest free loans and lending with preferential terms.

After Friday's meeting, Vice-Foreign Minister Zhang Ming said at a news conference thatChina and Africa have signed at least 243 cooperation agreements of various kinds worth$50.7 billion since the summit.

"Among these agreements, Chinese companies' direct investment and commercial loans toAfrica surpass $46 billion, accounting for 91 percent of the total volume," he said.

Xi sent a congratulatory letter to the meeting on Friday, saying that in the past six months,China and Africa have worked together to overcome the negative effects of the sluggishworld economy and that they have made tangible achievements in implementing theagreements at the summit.

The current weak performance of the world economy brings opportunities and challengesfor the economic development of China and Africa, Xi said.

Anil Sooklal, South Africa's coordinator on implementing agreements of the summit, saidnow the relationship between China and Africa is not one between donor and receiver butone between partners and equals.

"We must understand that the coordinator's meeting is taking place at a time when theglobal economy is facing severe crises, when access to finance for development is verydifficult to come by ... but China has come forward to push this cooperation."

"What is encouraging also ... is that ... Africa wants to learn from China and partner withChina," he said.

 

[ahojunk]

Anil Sooklal, South Africa's coordinator on implementing agreements of the summit, said now the relationship between China and Africa is not one between donor and receiver but one between partners and equals.

"What is encouraging also ... is that ... Africa wants to learn from China and partner with China,"

.
Beautiful!

If you give a fish, the person will live for a day.

If you teach him how to fish, he can live forever!

Inclusive development, real assistance from a real friend, China!

 

[艹艹艹]

.
Beautiful!

If you give a fish, the person will live for a day.

If you teach him how to fish, he can live forever!

Inclusive development, real assistance from a real friend, China!

“If you give a fish, the person will live for a day.
If you teach him how to fish, he can live forever!”
Chinese：授人以鱼，不如授人以渔

 

[ahojunk]

“If you give a fish, the person will live for a day.
If you teach him how to fish, he can live forever!”
Chinese：授人以鱼，不如授人以渔

.

The official proverb:-

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day,
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

 

[艹艹艹]

.

The official proverb:-

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day,
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

yes！

 

[Mangus Ortus Novem]

China has been helpinng the africans for decades.

So many doctors and engineers where sent there even when China was itself poor.

Now with economic integeration with China africa will benefit greatly.

China is building 21st century infrastructure in africa.

Great going.

A stable and economic growing africa is in Chinese national interests.

 

[艹艹艹]

China Promises More Aid to Africa

Beijing — China will gradually increase aid to Africa, a Ministry of Commerce (MOC) official said here on Tuesday.

"China's aid to Africa has been carried out in accordance with China's capabilities. The aid to Africa accounts for a limited proportion of China's gross domestic product," said Shu Luomei, an official with the MOC Department of Western Asian and African Affairs.

Since 2000, China has helped Africa build more than 120 educational facilities, nearly 40 irrigation projects to support agricultural production, and over 70 medical facilities.

Shu's remarks at a press conference came three days before a Sino-African coordinators' meeting on the implementation of actions resulting from the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in December 2015.

At the Johannesburg Summit, China announced 10 major plans for China-Africa cooperation over the next three years, backed by a package of 60 billion U.S. dollars.

Of the financial package, 10 billion dollars was allocated to a China-Africa industrial capacity cooperation fund, which will mainly invest in manufacturing, hi-tech, agriculture, energy, infrastructure construction and finance in African countries.

The package also includes 5 billion dollars of free aid and interest-free loans, 35 billion dollars of preferential loans and export credit on more favorable terms and 5 billion dollars of additional capital for the China-Africa Development Fund and the Special Loan for the Development of African small and medium-sized enterprises.

"The MOC, for its part, will push forward these projects in an orderly manner and in accordance with the schedule," Shu told reporters.

Since 2012, China has provided African countries with over 20 billion dollars in loans to support infrastructure, investment, small- and medium-sized enterprises, agriculture and manufacturing.

Shu said Sino-African economic cooperation has diversified in the past few years and expanded to more fields including trade, infrastructure, industrial investment, finance, logistics and regional aviation.

"China's investment in Africa is a highlight of Sino-African economic and trade cooperation in the past years. It is set to bring Sino-African economic ties to a new level in the years to come," she said.

MOC data showed that China's non-financial outbound investment in Africa jumped 10 percent year on year in the first half of 2016 to more than 1.3 billion U.S. dollars.

 

[TaiShang]

China and Africa step up media cooperation in bid to challenge Western dominance
By Lovemore Chikova (People's Daily Online) August 11, 2016

Someone suggested during an informal discussion at the recent Third Forum on China-Africa Media Cooperation in Beijing that there be effective ways to challenge the dominance of Western media.

This torched a “little” debate, with some arguing that the idea was plausible, while others thought it would be a futile attempt.

Those who dismissed the idea cited how Western media has been so entrenched, especially in African societies, that almost everything they say is taken as the gospel truth.

Then, from nowhere, someone suggested: “Why not pull resources together and come up with our own version of CNN or BBC”.

There was dead silence when another person pointed out that CCTV was already available, but had not managed to match the influence of the Western media so far.

This debate emanated from the undeniable fact that Western media has not been fair in its reportage of both Africa and China.

And media observers believe that time has come for the two to strengthen their cooperation in media to challenge the existing stereotypes being churned by the Western media.

The cooperation in media between China and African countries has already attracted the attention of Western critics, with volumes of articles being produced on what it entails.

What has been clear in such a discourse is that Western countries feel unsettled with that kind of relationship.

“China wants to colonise Africa using the influence of the media”, they argue, perhaps having learnt from their own deeds.

The West successfully used the media in its bid to control the mentality and culture of Africans.

And there is now genuine fear from those quarters that this unbalanced approach is getting a great deal of scrutiny.

They would not want cooperation between Chinese and African media to succeed for obvious reasons.

Zimbabwe’s Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Christopher Mushohwe believes that challenging media dominance from the West should be the priority in media cooperation between China and Africa.

Like many other media experts from both China and Africa, Mushohwe is convinced this can be done.

But he believes that the pace to reach the desired goal is a little too slow.

“In essence, the elimination of dependence on Western global media organisations for news, broadcasting content and sources of information is the most important outcome we expect from increased exchange and cooperation in the media between China and African countries,” he said.

Mushohwe was speaking at the Third Forum on China-Africa Media Cooperation.

“Evidently, progress towards the attainment of this goal will depend on the pace at which we African countries will work to wean ourselves from over dependence on Western global media,” he continued.

Mushohwe suggested that in the meantime, the short term solution can be to increase the presence of Chinese journalists in Africa and vice-versa, to give the people a true picture of both sides.

He suggested the pulling together of resources to encourage more exchange of content and personnel between African and Chinese media.

“China is a victim of Western media propaganda as most African states are, particularly against those regimes viewed as a threat to American and Western interests which they seek to remove,” he said.

“We need to stand shoulder to shoulder with China to fight Western imperialism which is fronted every day through their mass media outlets, with many of them operating from our countries.”

Most Africans know China from the eyes of the Western media lenses, in as much as the Chinese know Africa from the same source.

This has had an effect on the attitude of the people and sometimes hinder smooth progress in furthering Sino-Africa relations.

The reality, which must be accepted, is that the Western media will never change its stance on portrayal of both China and Africa.

So, in both China and Africa, there is a yawning gap for media that can give more objective, impartial and balanced public international opinion about the world.

China has been capacitating the media in Africa through various means.

Several African journalists have been granted an opportunity to come to China for further training, familiarisation tours and furthering their education.

The Asian country has since established the China Africa Press Centre which takes journalists from Africa to stay and work in China for 10 months each year.

China has also been helping capacitate various media houses in African countries with the provision of the latest technologies.

The other advantage forming the foundation of this envisaged grand plan is that China’s media presence is already being felt in many African countries.

Media houses such as People's Daily, Xinhua, China Radio International, CCTV and China Daily already operate bureaus in some of the African countries.

Chinese Minister of State Administration of Radio, Film and Television Cai Fuchao is agreeable that a new level is needed in media cooperation between the two sides.

“China will hold firm and adhere to the genuine, frank, close and sincere principle so as to develop media cooperation with Africa in an all-round way,” he told the same forum.

“The Chinese media will work with their African counterparts to consolidate the basis for their cooperation, expand space for cooperation and broaden areas of cooperation to promote China-Africa media ties to a new level and make contributions to the development of the comprehensive China-Africa strategic partnership.”

The implementation of the media cooperation is being done under the auspices of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), a broad platform meant to enhance collaboration between the two sides.

For this media cooperation between China and Africa to be effective, the planners must not lose fact that the world is now globalised.

Anyone who comes with the news first is believed more.

So, the positive story of China and Africa should always be ahead of the negative story that can be difficult to correct once it reaches audiences first.

These days of advanced technologies, people are no longer interested much in reading or watching and then analyse the issues.

They now normally watch, read and spread the news, thanks to the one touch communication gadgets now readily available.

They don’t mind if it is a rumour or an outright lie.

African Union Commission deputy chairperson Erastus Mwencha says without a strong China-Africa media, the cooperation between the two sides will come to naught.

“The institutional capacity of the media needs to be reinforced, as I had mentioned earlier,” he told the delegates at the forum.

“We need to support media cooperation, media networking and media development, as well as capacity building in the field of journalism which remains a key factor to tell our stories and in fostering the development agenda.”

Observers say what is needed now is to put suggestions into tangible action to ensure that there emerges a strong media serving both China and Africa.

It is clear that the media plays an important role in promoting China-Africa relations and help debunk the biased information coming from other sources.

A new model of international relations, as pronounced by China, based on win-win cooperation, mutual respect and equality is emerging.

This can only be more effective when there is strong media to propagate it.

From the example of cooperation between China and Africa, the media project can end up having a buy-in from other developing countries.

That will be the day when developing countries, whose combined population is far much higher than the developed ones, will have their voice back.

Lovemore Chikova is the News Editor of The Herald Newspaper in Zimbabwe, a fellow at the China-Africa Press Centre and an intern at People’s Daily Online. He can be contacted on lchikovahh@yahoo.com

 

[PaklovesTurkiye]

China and Africa step up media cooperation in bid to challenge Western dominance
By Lovemore Chikova (People's Daily Online) August 11, 2016

Someone suggested during an informal discussion at the recent Third Forum on China-Africa Media Cooperation in Beijing that there be effective ways to challenge the dominance of Western media.

This torched a “little” debate, with some arguing that the idea was plausible, while others thought it would be a futile attempt.

Those who dismissed the idea cited how Western media has been so entrenched, especially in African societies, that almost everything they say is taken as the gospel truth.

Then, from nowhere, someone suggested: “Why not pull resources together and come up with our own version of CNN or BBC”.

There was dead silence when another person pointed out that CCTV was already available, but had not managed to match the influence of the Western media so far.

This debate emanated from the undeniable fact that Western media has not been fair in its reportage of both Africa and China.

And media observers believe that time has come for the two to strengthen their cooperation in media to challenge the existing stereotypes being churned by the Western media.

The cooperation in media between China and African countries has already attracted the attention of Western critics, with volumes of articles being produced on what it entails.

What has been clear in such a discourse is that Western countries feel unsettled with that kind of relationship.

“China wants to colonise Africa using the influence of the media”, they argue, perhaps having learnt from their own deeds.

The West successfully used the media in its bid to control the mentality and culture of Africans.

And there is now genuine fear from those quarters that this unbalanced approach is getting a great deal of scrutiny.

They would not want cooperation between Chinese and African media to succeed for obvious reasons.

Zimbabwe’s Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Christopher Mushohwe believes that challenging media dominance from the West should be the priority in media cooperation between China and Africa.

Like many other media experts from both China and Africa, Mushohwe is convinced this can be done.

But he believes that the pace to reach the desired goal is a little too slow.

“In essence, the elimination of dependence on Western global media organisations for news, broadcasting content and sources of information is the most important outcome we expect from increased exchange and cooperation in the media between China and African countries,” he said.

Mushohwe was speaking at the Third Forum on China-Africa Media Cooperation.

“Evidently, progress towards the attainment of this goal will depend on the pace at which we African countries will work to wean ourselves from over dependence on Western global media,” he continued.

Mushohwe suggested that in the meantime, the short term solution can be to increase the presence of Chinese journalists in Africa and vice-versa, to give the people a true picture of both sides.

He suggested the pulling together of resources to encourage more exchange of content and personnel between African and Chinese media.

“China is a victim of Western media propaganda as most African states are, particularly against those regimes viewed as a threat to American and Western interests which they seek to remove,” he said.

“We need to stand shoulder to shoulder with China to fight Western imperialism which is fronted every day through their mass media outlets, with many of them operating from our countries.”

Most Africans know China from the eyes of the Western media lenses, in as much as the Chinese know Africa from the same source.

This has had an effect on the attitude of the people and sometimes hinder smooth progress in furthering Sino-Africa relations.

The reality, which must be accepted, is that the Western media will never change its stance on portrayal of both China and Africa.

So, in both China and Africa, there is a yawning gap for media that can give more objective, impartial and balanced public international opinion about the world.

China has been capacitating the media in Africa through various means.

Several African journalists have been granted an opportunity to come to China for further training, familiarisation tours and furthering their education.

The Asian country has since established the China Africa Press Centre which takes journalists from Africa to stay and work in China for 10 months each year.

China has also been helping capacitate various media houses in African countries with the provision of the latest technologies.

The other advantage forming the foundation of this envisaged grand plan is that China’s media presence is already being felt in many African countries.

Media houses such as People's Daily, Xinhua, China Radio International, CCTV and China Daily already operate bureaus in some of the African countries.

Chinese Minister of State Administration of Radio, Film and Television Cai Fuchao is agreeable that a new level is needed in media cooperation between the two sides.

“China will hold firm and adhere to the genuine, frank, close and sincere principle so as to develop media cooperation with Africa in an all-round way,” he told the same forum.

“The Chinese media will work with their African counterparts to consolidate the basis for their cooperation, expand space for cooperation and broaden areas of cooperation to promote China-Africa media ties to a new level and make contributions to the development of the comprehensive China-Africa strategic partnership.”

The implementation of the media cooperation is being done under the auspices of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), a broad platform meant to enhance collaboration between the two sides.

For this media cooperation between China and Africa to be effective, the planners must not lose fact that the world is now globalised.

Anyone who comes with the news first is believed more.

So, the positive story of China and Africa should always be ahead of the negative story that can be difficult to correct once it reaches audiences first.

These days of advanced technologies, people are no longer interested much in reading or watching and then analyse the issues.

They now normally watch, read and spread the news, thanks to the one touch communication gadgets now readily available.

They don’t mind if it is a rumour or an outright lie.

African Union Commission deputy chairperson Erastus Mwencha says without a strong China-Africa media, the cooperation between the two sides will come to naught.

“The institutional capacity of the media needs to be reinforced, as I had mentioned earlier,” he told the delegates at the forum.

“We need to support media cooperation, media networking and media development, as well as capacity building in the field of journalism which remains a key factor to tell our stories and in fostering the development agenda.”

Observers say what is needed now is to put suggestions into tangible action to ensure that there emerges a strong media serving both China and Africa.

It is clear that the media plays an important role in promoting China-Africa relations and help debunk the biased information coming from other sources.

A new model of international relations, as pronounced by China, based on win-win cooperation, mutual respect and equality is emerging.

This can only be more effective when there is strong media to propagate it.

From the example of cooperation between China and Africa, the media project can end up having a buy-in from other developing countries.

That will be the day when developing countries, whose combined population is far much higher than the developed ones, will have their voice back.

Lovemore Chikova is the News Editor of The Herald Newspaper in Zimbabwe, a fellow at the China-Africa Press Centre and an intern at People’s Daily Online. He can be contacted on lchikovahh@yahoo.com

It will be excellent development if succeeds. Hopefully, Pakistan will join too. Western media tries to portray us as a boogeyman to make evil out of us in front of their own population to justify their malicious attempts against us.

 

[Beast]

China just need to keep drum up western past colonised of black as slaves. Show gruesome photo of slaves being tortured and murder by white master. Let the African know who is the real villain to them. That will do the trick.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Lynching-1889.jpg

 

[艹艹艹]

http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0816/c90000-9100833.html

Chinese provinces target Africa for investments
By Lovemore Chikova (People's Daily Online) 14:03, August 16, 2016

Chinese provinces are increasingly taking an interest in exploring African markets for their investments and help firms on the continent increase production capacity.

The venturing into Africa by the Chinese provinces is in line with the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and pronouncements by the Chinese government at the last meeting of the body in South Africa last year.

China is the biggest backer of the African Union’s Agenda 2063, a platform which envisages all the 54 countries on the continent enjoying some form of industrialisation by that year.

In that pursuant, six Chinese provinces recently held the Forum on Global Production Capacity and Business Cooperation in Wuhan city of Hubei province of China to seek ways of increasing this cooperation.

The provinces were Hubei, Jiangxi, Shanxi, Anhui, Henan and Hunan.

The forum saw the provinces signing 28 major projects worth about $8 billion in areas such as infrastructure, high and new technology, new energy, bio-pharmaceutical, energy conservation, logistics and environment protection.

Chinese officials who spoke at the forum included Director General of the Department of African Affairs at Chinese Foreign Ministry Mr Lin Songtian, Vice President of China-African Business Council Mr Zhang Huatong and the general manager of the Department of Northeast Africa Investment Mr Li Dongwei.

Mr Lin said Africa had bright prospects and Chinese provinces and firms should take an active role in the continent’s development.

“Africa is the important direction of China’s international cooperation on production capacity,” he added.

African delegates invited the Chinese provinces and firms to partner with their countries.

Speaking at the forum, Zimbabwean ambassador to China Mr Paul Chikawa said African countries needed to broaden their industrial bases and increase production capacity.

“We have several opportunities spanning several sectors - infrastructure, energy, water, transportation, housing, construction, agriculture and agro-industry, tourism as well as, indeed, trade itself,” he said.

“It is in this regard that we invite and welcome Chinese companies to come to Zimbabwe to operate under the banner of the production capacity cooperation.”

One of the Chinese provinces to take this initiative to a higher level is Jiangsu, which continues to invest millions in countries such as Zimbabwe.

Photo taken on Dec. 9, 2014 shows the construction site of the expansion of the Victoria Falls International Airport in Zimbabwe

The province recently completed the expansion of the Victoria Falls International Airport in Zimbabwe, at a cost of $150 million and has invested more funds in iron and steel metallurgy, agriculture, construction and installation,

Victoria Falls is the major tourist attraction spot in the country and is listed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation as a World Heritage Site and is also considered one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

Responding to questions from this reporter on the province’s investments in the Southern African country recently, the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Commerce said the volume of trade with Zimbabwe was growing.

“In 2015, Jiangsu’s trade volume with Zimbabwe totaled $56.39 million, up by 18.4 percent from a year earlier,” said the province. “Of this total volume, $53.80 million were from Jiangsu’s export to Zimbabwe, up by 72.8 percent, $2.59 million import, down by 84.3 percent.

“Among our exports to Zimbabwe, machine, mechanical appliance, electrical equipment and the parts took the first place, accounting for 53.3 percent, base metal and its metal works as well as textile raw material and textile products ranked the second and third, accounting for 12.1 percent and 11.7 percent respectively.”

Jiangsu said imports from Zimbabwe were mostly minerals, accounting for 69.7 percent, textile raw material and textile products ranked second, accounting for 26.7 percent, wood and wood products ranked third, accounting for 3.6 percent.

“Meanwhile, we encourage our enterprises to carry out investment study activities in Zimbabwe,” said the province. “We will continue to serve and support Jiangsu enterprises in their endeavour to invest and develop African countries, including Zimbabwe.”

The province urged the Zimbabwean government to strengthen the inter-governmental communication with major investing countries and implement cooperation that truly reflects mutual benefit and win-win relations.

The China Jiangsu International Economic and Technical Cooperation Group Ltd (CJI), a State firm of Jiangsu province, was instrumental in carrying out the Victoria Falls International Airport Expansion and many other projects.

The expanded airport was put into service in December last year and it is estimated that the number of tourist arrivals at the resort would increase from 500,000 to more than two million per year.

Wide body airplanes such as Boeing 747 and 767 and Airbus 340 and 380 will now be able to take off or land on the newly-built airfield runway.

“In Zimbabwe or even Southern Africa, this airport will be regarded as a modern international airport, for all its technical and application dimensions have reached high standards of today’s international civil aviation services,” said CJI in response to the questions.

“The expansion on Victoria Falls Airport brings jobs to local people, horns the skills of Zimbabwean technicians, teaches Chinese big time construction technique and management to Zimbabwean counterparts, nurtures a group of talents locally and helps promote the construction industry in Zimbabwe.”

CJI said it would continue to engage in facilitating development of African express railway network, expressway network, regional aviation network and infrastructure in cooperation strategies between China and African countries.

 

[艹艹艹]

Investment main driver for China-Africa cooperation
Source: Xinhua | 2016-08-17 17:47:30 | Editor: huaxia

Photo shows a piece of welded steel rails at a rail-welding base in Wuhu, east China's Anhui Province. Lacking their own steel capacity, some African countries rely heavily on imports. (Xinhua/Liu Junxi)

NAIROBI, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Wang Shusheng, from Hebei Province of Northern China, is occupied with his steel plant in Tanzania set to go into operation in October.

Wang is the manager of Kiluwa Steel Group Co. Ltd, which covers an area of 300 acres, located in a remote land inKibaha District, eastern Tanzania.

The factory mainly produces screw-thread steel and wire rod, with a first-phase investment of about 200 million yuan (about 30 million U.S. dollars).

In underdeveloped Africa, infrastructure construction is the guarantee for development and it requires rebar, cement and electric power, Wang said.

In Tanzania, the quality of local rebar cannot meet the requirement of building skyscrapers or bridges. As a result, 70 percent of rebar in the country are imported.

Wang is among an increasing number of Chinese entrepreneurs who are turning their eyes to Africa to seek business opportunities.

Partial statistics show that China and Africa have signed over 180 various cooperation agreements with a total value of 32.5 billion U.S. dollars since the Johannesburg Summit of The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation last December. This includes 29.1 billion dollars of commercial loans, accounting for nearly 90 percent of the total amount.

Investment-led cooperation is becoming a main driver for business cooperation, marking a new stage of higher quality of economic cooperation and trade between China and Africa, said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Plenary Session of the Coordinators' Meeting On the Implementation of the Follow-up Actions of The Johannesburg Summit in July.

Shi Jiyang, CEO of China-Africa Development Fund (CAD Fund), noted that Africa is a new horizon of global economic growth, the most dynamic economy second only to East and South Asia. There is an enormous potential of China-Africa cooperation, particularly in terms of investment.

Shi said more and more Chinese enterprises will invest in Africa, along with the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Ten Cooperation Plans as put forward at the Johannesburg summit.

According to the statistics from the CAD Fund, trade between China and Africa reached 222 billion dollars in 2014 and is projected to hit 400 billion dollars by 2020; the stock of Chinese investment in Africa amounted to 32.4billion dollars in 2014 and is expected to reach 100 billion dollars by 2020.

China has been a transformational partner from the standpoint of Africa's development, Prof. Lemma Senbet, executive director of African Economic Research Consortium said on Friday in Mombasa, Kenya.

Senbet said at the China-Africa Media & Think-Tanks Symposium that China has emerged as Africa's largest trading partner, but China's engagement with Africa is not just limited to minerals and oil.

"It is multifaceted and multilayered," he said.

He also said it is important that China and Africa should foster relationship in other spheres apart from that fostered by government actors.

"China could provide some public-private partnership to interface the private sector in Africa and also use that as a pattern of investment. That would be win-win," added Senbet.

 

[ahojunk]

The following is quite a good article on the competition in Africa between China and Japan.
Hopefully, the winner is Africa.

--------
As China and Japan scramble for Africa, Africa's challenge is to maximise investment
PETER FABRICIUS
03 SEP 2016 00:00

Chinese President Xi Jinping. South Africa has tried harder than most other African countries to normalise ties with China. (AFP)

There are two shoe factories in Addis Ababa which carry a disproportionate weight of the burden for maintaining the credibility of China and Japan’s rival efforts to help Africa industrialise by adding value to its natural products. That is a key ambition of both Focac – the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation – and Ticad – the Tokyo International Conference for Africa’s Development. It is at the core of their efforts to graduate the continent from its historical dependence on aid and launch it into the normal world of commerce.

Huajian is China’s showcase shoe factory in Gelan, 30kms outside the capital. It produces about 60% of Ethiopia’s leather exports, supplying high quality shoes to top brands in Europe, the US and the East and employing about 3 500 Ethiopians.

Zemedeneh Negatu of Ernst and Young, Ethiopia has explained that if you take Ethiopia’s vast livestock resources and its abundant cheap labour and add Huajian’s global supply chain, its expertise and its capital, you have an industry which ought to thrive. Which it seems to be doing.

Perhaps it’s because Huajian has become China’s African posterboy shoe factory that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe felt he had to present one of his own when he opened the sixth Ticad summit in Nairobi last Saturday.

He said Japan would continue to help increase the productivity of factories across Africa by 30% through application of its home-grown business philosophy of ‘kaizen’. Already, he said, the Peacock Shoe factory in Ethiopia had increased its daily production from 500 pairs of shoes to 800 using kaizen.

The Huajian-Peacock comparison is telling, though. As Deborah Bräutigam, Director of the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, points out: “Peacock has been successful as a producer of local shoes in Ethiopia but has not been very successful at breaking into the global export market … They have received a lot of foreign aid-funded help, [but] I don’t think they have more than 500 employees in their shoe factory.”

That rather epitomises the difference between China and Japan more generally. Japan led the world in formalising its engagement with Africa by launching Ticad in 1993. China (and the European Union, incidentally) only climbed on the bandwagon in 2000 when Focac was born in Beijing. Several other countries or regions, like India, Turkey, South Korea and South America have followed suit.

China has taken the lead

Yet, despite its head start, Japan has fallen behind China in the new scramble for Africa. As Elizabeth Sidiropoulos and Neuma Grobbelaar of the SA Institute of International Affairs pointed out in an article last week, Japan from the start had a similar approach as China had, focusing on infrastructure development and putting little, if any, emphasis on political conditionality – the Western preoccupation which alienated many African recipients of its aid.

“Yet, [Japan] has not benefited among African countries from this fact at the political level. It has been seen as part of the West, and China’s strong diplomatic outreach to Africa with its emphasis on South-South has made a greater impact since 2000,” write Sidiropoulos and Grobbelaar.

So recently, Japan has been playing catch-up, moving its Ticad summits from a five-yearly to a three-yearly cycle, the same as China, and, in Nairobi, holding its first conference on African soil to emphasise the equality of the partnership. This also matched China, which alternates Focac between China and Africa.

The changes meant that Ticad 6 took place just a few months after Focac 6, in Sandton last December, enabling a comparison which was probably not flattering to Japan. Although the impact of such aid packages are very difficult to decode, the headlines favoured China. President Xi Jinping announced US$60-billion of goodies in Sandton; Abe promised just half that amount in Nairobi.

Nonetheless, Japan has found its niche in the aid industry, by concentrating its assistance on human resources and capacity building.

In any case, in recent years both China and Japan have shifted their emphasis increasingly away from conventional aid and towards trying to establish more normal commercial relations with Africa.

Abe brought about 75 business leaders with him to Nairobi where he said ‘the partnership connecting Japan and Africa has entered, really, a mutually beneficial stage.’ He launched the Japan-Africa Public and Private Economic Forum as a permanent forum in which Japanese and Chinese business leaders would also meet every three years to advance commercial ties.

South Africa has tried harder than most other African countries to normalise those ties with China. It has used Focac to pressure Beijing to invest more in Africa, particularly in projects to add value to African raw materials, to balance the heavily skewed (some say “neo-colonial”) relationship, in which China imports almost exclusively raw materials and exports almost entirely manufactured goods, creating huge trade surpluses with most African countries.

That flood of Chinese manufactured goods, noticeably vehicles, has largely dislodged Japan from what was until not so long ago its top spot in most African markets.

South Africa’s lobbying has registered some success, with some Chinese investments in beneficiating minerals. And just this week Chinese vehicle maker BAIC and South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation announced a R11-billion joint in the Coega Industrial Development Zone near Port Elizabeth, to make 100 000 vehicles a year, using 60% local content and creating more than 2 500 jobs during the construction phase.

Maximising Chinese and Japanese investment

Elsewhere in Africa though, such value-adding industrial investments have been scarce – which is why so much attention has been given to those Ethiopian shoe factories, which exemplify that cherished model of development. Brautigam explains this by saying: “Ethiopia and Rwanda continue to be the only countries with a leadership that is fairly united in being focused on economic development and structural transformation that takes advantage of their low wage advantage.”

Apart from the economics, China and Japan’s political rivalry could be read between the lines in Nairobi.

Sidiropoulos and Neuma see Ticad 6 as evidence of Abe’s more assertive foreign policy generally, in part as a response to Xi flexing his muscles by demanding exclusive rights to several islands and sea lanes, also claimed by Japan and several other countries, in the South and East China Seas.

Abe did make an oblique pitch for Africa’s support in this dispute when he said that Japan wanted to work with Africa to ensure the sea lanes connecting them were kept free, open and peaceful, and governed by the rule of law. This seemed to be a reference to China’s rejection of international arbitration of these disputes.

Beijing has scoffed at Ticad 6, suggesting Abe’s sole aim was to win African support for Japan’s bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council – which China vehemently opposes.

Abe did indeed refer to that in his speech in Nairobi, saying that “Reform of the United Nations Security Council is truly a goal that Japan and Africa hold in common” and calling on all African states to work with Japan to achieve it by 2023. He explicitly endorsed Africa’s ambition for a permanent presence on the UN Security Council, unlike China, it must be said, which remains at best ambivalent. It is striking though, that that ambivalence does not seem to have dimmed Africa’s support for China.

But whichever Asian nation is winning or losing the battle for African influence need not matter for Africa if it remains aloof from the fray. In fact, it is an advantage. As Sidiropoulos and Grobbelaar quote Kenyan foreign affairs and international trade Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed as saying: “Everybody is competing in the same space. And if there is no competition, there is a problem. It simply allows us to choose the best.”

The real challenge for Africa is not to maximise the flow of aid, but to create the conditions to maximise both Chinese and Japanese investment.

 

[Shotgunner51]

World Bank, China scale up support for Africa
September 20, 2016 Business

THE World Bank Group is strengthening its partnership with China in support of African development through two major initiatives launched during the second “Investing in Africa Forum (IAF).’’

The recent international forum was held in Guangzhou, China, a region home to a large African business community with the aim of boosting investment across Sub-Saharan Africa.

The World Bank, the Chinese National Energy Administration (NEA) and Chinese Ministry of Finance have signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen energy cooperation in Africa in clean and renewable power including solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, natural gas as well as power grid and off grid solutions.

“The World Bank welcomes China’s commitment to energy development in Africa, which will help increase the level of industrialisation and support the continent’s aspiration for prosperity and inclusive growth. Africa also has large untapped potential for renewable energy, which if developed will help close a critical infrastructure gap and address climate change at the same time,” said Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group.
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The MoU, signed by World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, Nur Bekri, Administrator of China’s National Energy Administration, and Shi Yaobin, Vice Minister of Chinese Ministry of Finance represents an important step in deepening tripartite collaboration between African countries, China and the World Bank.

“China is more than ever committed to Africa’s development and we value our partnership with the World Bank Africa Region in joint support for Africa,” said Hu Haibang, Chairman of China Development Bank, who co-hosted the forum along with the People’s Government of Guangdong province of China.​

The forum also saw the launch of the Africa Think Tank Alliance (IATTA), a groundbreaking platform promoting knowledge sharing and partnerships among think tanks in Africa, China and worldwide.

“The establishment of the Africa Think Tank Alliance is a win for all,” says Albert Zeufack, the World Bank’s Africa region chief economist.

“One of the major objectives of this initiative is to strengthen the research and analytical capacities of research institutes in Africa and to increase their influence on the international scene,” he said.​

The IATTA will also inform capital investment decisions by developing guidelines, investment plans and policy suggestions to client countries, he added.

This year’s forum —attended by Patrice Talon, the president of Benin, and Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa— brought together about 300 policymakers, private sector representatives and development partners, who shared experiences and explored opportunities to accelerate investment in Africa.

A number of projects in African countries with committed or prospective investment from China were signed at the forum including a manufacturing cluster project with Ethiopia and an ethanol and biomass project with Sierra Leone.

“This Forum has created new opportunities for Guangdong’s entrepreneurs to invest in Africa,” says Zhu Xiaodan, Governor of Guangdong province.​

“We share our experience in development and investment in Africa which will result in win-win outcomes for both Guangdong province and Africa while fostering cooperation in complementary sectors.”​

During the closing session of the Forum, Senegal’s Minister of Economy, Finance and Planning, Amadou Ba, announced that his country will host the next Investing in Africa Forum in 2017. — Extracted from the worldbank.org


http://www.chronicle.co.zw/world-bank-china-scale-up-support-for-africa/