Inclusiveapproach
Opportunities exist for Africa in the Belt and Road Initiative
the Silk Road economic Belt and the 21stCentury Maritime Silk Road, China’s twin global outreach development paradigms, enunciated by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 during his state visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia, are up and running.
Originally designed as a Eurasian transport network and integrated three-dimensional and interconnected system that is composed of railways, highways, aviation, navigation, oil and gas pipelines, transmission lines and communication networks from which industrial clusters would emerge, it has become a globally inclusive framework.
The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road, better known collectively as the Belt and Road Initiative, are today taking shape as a trans-regional cooperation model connecting Asia, Africa and Europe’s policies, trade, facilities, funds and people in the 21st century. According to the document Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-century Maritime Silk Road, co-released by China’s National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Commerce in 2015, the joint construction of the Belt and Road is “aimed at promoting orderly and free flow of economic factors, highly efficient allocation of resources and deep integration of markets, encouraging the countries along the Belt and Road to achieve economic policy coordination and carry out broader and more in-depth regional cooperation of higher standards, and jointly creating an open, inclusive and balanced regional economic cooperation architecture that benefits all.”