Cooperation with China instrumental in Africa’s agriculture development

Cooperation with China has been “very instrumental” in agriculture development and transformation in Africa, said former prime minister of Ethiopia Hailemariam Desalegn.

In an exclusive interview with Xinhua on Tuesday in the Rwandan capital city Kigali, Desalegn said Africa’s transformation is focusing on moving from subsistence to commercial farming, which means producing a surplus for the markets and changing agriculture into business.

The former Ethiopian prime minister is now board chair of the agriculture institution based in Nairobi, Kenya, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). He is in Rwanda for the launch of the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) 2020 Summit, slated for September next year.

He explained that the agricultural transformation in Africa also means the adoption of a modern agriculture system with current technologies, especially digital technologies, in an attempt to help transform agriculture production and provide jobs to most young Africans.

After Ethiopia started agriculture transformation, it brought in experts from China, who have helped the East African country develop its agriculture extension systems, said Desalegn.

Chinese experts also trained a large number of Ethiopia’s agriculture extension agents, and Ethiopian experts learned from Chinese experts, he said.

These have helped transform Ethiopia’s agriculture extension system and the two countries also have joint research to gain more knowledge and bring about change in Ethiopia, he noted.

According to him, Ethiopia benefited from China through the transfer of technologies, and joint research helped Ethiopia-based and Africa-based seeds to be improved to highly productive seeds.

Ethiopia also gets financial support from China both in terms of soft loans and free grants, he said.

Africa has to apply and adapt basic principles and methodologies used in China to its own conditions, he said.

Desalegn will lead a team of AGRA to attend a China-Africa agricultural forum in South China’s Hainan Province in December.

“Such forums are very important to us to work with China. We have South-South cooperation programs. We will work with South-South cooperation programs very well and again we have the Forum on ChinaAfrica Cooperation (FOCAC), which is a general framework for our work.”

“I think there is huge work we have to do together with the government, private sector and civil society groups,” said Desalegn, who was talking about potential agricultural cooperation between China and Africa.

Rwanda is set to host the AGRF 2020 Summit in September 2020. The annual summit is designed to energize political will and advance the policies, programs and investments required to achieve an inclusive and sustainable agricultural transformation across Africa.

The article is from the Xinhua News Agency. opinion@ globaltimes.com.cn