It has been two years since the FOCAC Johannesburg Summit held in December 2015. How are the outcomes of the summit being implemented? China will host the next FOCAC Ministerial Conference in 2018. How can this mechanism boost the China-Africa partnership

President Xi announced 10 China-Africa cooperation plans to boost African industrialization and agricultural modernization. He pledged China would offer $60 billion of funding support, helping African countries break the three development bottlenecks of dilapidated infrastructure, talent shortage and inadequate funds, and realize independent and sustainable development.

With joint efforts, many achievements have been made in regard to the implementation of the achievements made at the FOCAC Johannesburg Summit. According to incomplete statistics, there have been 606 finished and unfinished Chinese supported projects in Africa valued at $108 billion since the summit. China has trained 100,000 technicians for African countries and offered about 20,000 government scholarships to African students. The Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway, the MombasaNairobi Standard Gauge Railway and the AbujaKaduna Railway have also been completed.

Production capacity cooperation has been accelerating with countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Zambia and Nigeria. The establishment of economic special zones and industrial parks in Ethiopia, Zambia, Uganda, the Republic of Congo and Egypt has made remarkable progress.

Guided by the FOCAC, bilateral win-win cooperation has entered a new stage of upgrade and transformation. The partnership has been upgraded from a model driven by government-dominated aid to one led by business investments, from focusing on trade to production capacity cooperation and manufacturing transformation, and from engineering project contracting to investment and financial cooperation.

The FOCAC conference in 2018 will be a new milestone for China-Africa cooperation. China is ready to take this opportunity to upgrade bilateral cooperation to a new level by aligning the Belt and Road Initiative with visions of African countries. The coming conference will push forward cooperation on areas of politics, economy, culture, security and international affairs, and further enrich the China-Africa strategic partnership.

To this end, China and South Africa should further expand new economic partnerships. First, we will align economic construction into the Belt and Road Initiative, explore maritime economic cooperation, and foster new sources of economic growth to diversify our economies. Second, we can tap into the potential of China’s New Four Great Inventions—high-speed trains, mobile payment, shared bikes and online shopping—to accelerate the modernization of Africa. Third, we will support settlements in renminbi, China’s currency, in China-Africa trade to help African countries lower currency exchange costs and foreign exchange risks. Fourth, we will deepen security cooperation to create a safe and peaceful environment for African economies and China-Africa cooperation. Fifth, we will make joint efforts on enhancing partnerships in the medical sector to help Africa solve the problem of insufficient medicine and medical services.