2018 Year of Africa
People-to-people exchange was a feature of the achievements made last year in china-africa cooperation
for China, 2018 is regarded as the “year of Africa.” The year witnessed frequent high-level exchange visits and, importantly, the opening of the Beijing Summit of the Forum on ChinaAfrica Cooperation (FOCAC) in September. In the first half of 2018 alone, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s special representative Yang Jiechi, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Li Zhanshu, and Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Wang Yang all visited Africa. On July 21-28, 2018, President Xi visited Senegal, Rwanda, South Africa and Mauritius, his fourth Africa visit after he was elected Chinese president in 2013. This shows that he attaches great importance to China-africa relations.
In addition, African leaders also visited China frequently. Within half a month after China concluded its annual sessions of the NPC and the CPPCC National Committee in March, the presidents of Cameroon, Namibia and Zimbabwe visited China. The three leaders expressed their wishes for strengthened alignment of their own development strategies with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The visits also saw China-namibia and China-zimbabwe relations being upgraded to comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.
A new chapter
The 2018 FOCAC Beijing Summit, held on September 3-4, pushed the “year of Africa”