Belt and Road Touches Senegal

development factors with the Belt and Road Initiative. And most of these themes are also found in the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

The trajectories of China and Africa run relatively parallel in three main stages. The first is based on liberation. Like China, Africa has finally liberated itself, whether from colonialization or apartheid. Then followed a phase of integration, in which China succeeded in bringing together 56 ethnic groups. If Africa has achieved this on a regional scale, it must now aim to do this at the continental level through the unification process designed by the African Union. The last stage is the development level that China is achieving with success, maintaining a very strong strategic partnership with Africa. This is what we must aim for and a path where China intends to accompany the continent through a very strong strategic partnership.

Senegal has a strategic plan for its economic and social development. The Emerging Senegal Plan is a 20-year plan issued in 2014, aimed at restructuring the economy in an inclusive and sustainable way with good governance. The minimum growth rate target is 7 percent by 2018, to be maintained for at least 10 years. When the plan was initiated, the growth rate was around 4.5 percent, but in the last two years we managed 6.4 and 6.5 percent respectively, implying we are on the right track to achieve our objective.

Now, Africa’s priority after modernizing and boosting agriculture for food security is industrialization. Without industrialization a country cannot be developed and Chinese industries delocalizing in Africa can help with this. It is mutually beneficial because China has to delocalize. Labor in China is becoming more expensive. So a product produced in China will no longer be as competitive as it used to be.

Chinese enterprises extended their delocalization in Ethiopia. Ethiopia stands as a success story and Senegal is now on the radar. Senegal is developing its own industrial park. The first stage is already completed. As the Chinese proverb goes, “you have to build a nest to attract the phoenix.”

Beneficial to Africa Seen from a broad perspective, it might be due to a lack of communication that so few West African countries have formally joined the Belt and Road Initiative. It’s possible that most of them look at the initiative’s map and think they are not involved because the road begins in China and goes to Eastern Europe and to the eastern coast of Africa, targeting only a few countries. So West African countries, which face the