GREATER FIELDS OF OPPORTUNITY

Agricultural cooperation between China and Africa benefits both

AThe author is minister of agriculture and rural affairs of China griculture is a key area in ChinaAfrica cooperation and can benefit both sides. Since the first summit of the Forum on China-africa Cooperation ( FOCAC) in Beijing in 2006, China and African countries have been promoting agricultural cooperation. Thanks to the devoted efforts of Chinese and African leaders, greater achievements have been made in this cooperation over the past few years by implementing Chinese President Xi Jinping’s initiative to create a China-africa community with a shared future. This has elevated China-africa agricultural cooperation to a new historic level. We will take the opportunity of this year’s FOCAC Beijing Summit to deepen bilateral collaboration in all areas and improve development quality.

Mutual benefits

Over the past 12 years, China and African countries have made outstanding achievements in advancing agricultural cooperation on a mutually beneficial and winwin basis.

The Chinese Government has been working with administrations of African countries under the principles of sincerity, real results, affinity and good faith, and following the approach of upholding justice and pursuing shared interests. Both sides have implemented the outcomes related to agricultural cooperation made at successive FOCAC summits in a comprehensive manner and launched exchanges and cooperation in all areas, including policy, technology, personnel training, trade and investment. While accelerating Africa’s agricultural modernization, ensuring its food security and increasing agricultural product varieties on the market, such efforts are essential to expanding the space for agricultural development in China and Africa and realizing mutually beneficial cooperation with win-win results.

Chinese and African governments have strengthened policy consultation on agricultural cooperation, with a focus on exchanges concerning China’s experience and practices in agricultural and rural development and poverty reduction. In multilateral terms, China creates platforms for agricultural policy consultation with African countries by regularly holding meetings and inviting agricultural officials, experts and scholars from both sides to share their development concepts and practical experience. The efforts facilitate the alignment of China’s five-year plans for rural economic and social development and agricultural modernization plans with Africa’s comprehensive agricultural development plans. They also enable China and African countries to learn from each other. In bilateral terms, China has signed memoranda of understanding or protocols with 16 African countries, covering various fields such as the seed industry, animal husbandry, agricultural machinery, inspection and quarantine. China has also established agricultural cooperation commissions or working groups with these countries to launch agricultural policy exchanges of various kinds and synergize their agricultural development strategies, laying a solid institutional foundation for win-win agricultural cooperation.

China attaches great importance to actively promoting agricultural technology exchanges with African countries. To date, it has established 20 agricultural technology demonstration centers in 19 African countries to showcase China’s advanced agricultural products and technologies, build platforms for multilateral and bilateral technological cooperation and explore market-oriented and commercially sustainable operations. China has dispatched 724 agricultural experts, vocational education teachers and high-level consultants in 71 groups to 37 African countries to pass on their farming management expertise and help local farmers improve their comprehensive capacity in agricultural production. Based on the “10+10” partnership plan between Chinese and African agricultural research institutes, joint studies and research have been launched around new products, technologies and equipment suitable for Africa’s conditions. So far, China has launched trial growing of more than 300 agricultural products in various African countries and passed on more than 500 practical technologies to them, benefiting about 1 million farming households and providing important scientific and technological support and services to Africa’s agricultural development.

Thanks to their joint efforts, China and African countries have witnessed rapid growth in agricultural investment and trade in agricultural products. In 2017, China-africa trade in agricultural products exceeded $6 billion, up 185.3 percent over 2006. Of this amount, China imported $2.94 billion worth of agricultural products from Africa such as oilseeds, cotton and linen fibers and beverages, an increase of 143 percent. The sound trading relation-