Upgraded economic cooperation

He noted that the increasingly intensified political mutual trust between China and African countries has laid a sound foundation for cooperation in various sectors, and Sino-african economic cooperation has been upgraded in the past year.

At the Coordinators’ Meeting on the Implementation of the Follow-up Actions of the FOCAC Johannesburg Summit held in Beijing on July 29, a total of 63 cooperation agreements were signed between China and African countries, involving $18.29 billion. This included $16.23 billion of Chinese enterprises’ direct investment in Africa and business loans, accounting for 88.7 percent of the total.

Incomplete statistics show that after the FOCAC Johannesburg Summit, China has signed more than 240 agreements, involving $50.78 billion. This includes government aid (1.07 percent), concessional loans (6.2 percent) and Chinese enterprises’ direct investment and business loans (91.7 percent). “The figures show that China-africa cooperation has transformed from mainly government aid to mainly enterprise investment and financing, upgraded from commodity trade to industrial capacity cooperation and processing trade and changed from engineering contracting investment to financial cooperation,” said He.

In the past year, industrial capacity cooperation featuring enhancing interconnectivity among African countries has been on the rise. On October 5, the Ethiopia-djibouti Railway, built by Chinese companies - China Railway Group and China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. - came into service.

“The railway, together with Abuja-kaduna Railway and Coastal Railway in Nigeria and Benguela Railway in Angola, which were all built by Chinese companies, have laid a sound transportation basis for the continent’s future industrial development,” said He. “They are the best examples of China-africa industrial capacity cooperation.”

Comments to niyanshuo@chinafrica.cn