Officials, experts hail 50 years of ‘fulfilling’ journey

Officials and experts from both Ethiopia and China hailed bilateral relations as paradigms of win-win cooperation and common development, calling for deeper cooperation in more diversified fields.

Guided by “political trust and principles of mutual respect and equality”, the cooperation between the two countries has grown to a “new height”, said Demeke Mekonnen, deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs of Ethiopia.

He made the remarks on Monday at an online seminar commemorating the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Ethiopia.

As an active participant of the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, Ethiopia’s cooperation with China has improved the country’s infrastructure and beefed up its industrial facilities, he said while recalling the two country’s 50 years of a “rich and fulfilling” journey.

Ethiopia and China have signed and implemented a series of cooperation agreements on a wide range of fields in the past years.

In the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, industrialization was highlighted as a top priority for ChinaAfrica cooperation.

By 2019, a number of infrastructure projects built by Chinese companies were completed under the frame of the BRI, including the Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway, the first fully electrified cross-border railway line in Africa.

Lin Songtian, president of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, said the railway not just facilitates Ethiopia’s import and export trade by enabling a faster access to the port of Djibouti, but also provides transport and energy to develop local manufacturing.

BRI partner

Ethiopia is a partner of the BRI and a pilot demonstration country for China-Africa cooperation in production capacity, he said, citing the example of a 16.9-percent bilateral trade increase in the first half of 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chinese companies have created thousands of jobs for Ethiopian people, said Tang Xiaoyang, a researcher at Tsinghua University.

Chinese companies have provided technological training to many young people and some of them have been sent to China to acquire better skills, said Tang, while hailing it as an embodiment of sustainable cooperation.

Ethiopia has a population of nearly 110 million, of which 70 percent are young people.