GIDEON CHITANGA
African heads of states and government will be joined by representatives of regional and international organisations at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing, China from September 4 to 6, 2024. The Focac membership includes China, 53 African states and the continental mother body, the AU.
The summit, which will be held under the theme, “Joining Hands to Advance Modernisation and Build a High-Level China-Africa Community with a Shared Future”, comes at a critical juncture internationally and for Africa. African countries are reeling under domestic and internationally induced socio-economic economic pressures and resultant political instability.
Many countries in Africa are buckling under growing sovereign debt, sluggish post-Covid recovery, low inward flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) and, in some cases, aid, global geopolitical polarisation and dangerous wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says that global FDI flows were squeezed to about 7% in 2023, which translated to $1364 billion. The trend suggests a downward FDI spiral into African countries since 2021, aggravating dimming economic prospects on the continent.
Established in 2000, the ninth Focac Summit is an opportunity to expand and consolidate mutual solidarity and co-operation through people-centred development co-operation by strengthening historical ties, while crafting and further extending transformative and mutually beneficial economic co-operation in a manner that reaches the people in Africa.
The continent has emerged as a major foreign policy priority for China, as reflected in the common tradition of Chinese foreign ministers choosing Africa as the first stop on their annual overseas visits over the past 34 years, demonstrating unparalleled history of close international engagement and exchanges.
People-to-people diplomacy has massively expanded, including in research and student exchanges, as well as government-to-government high-level engagements. In this sense, Focac has become the cornerstone of China-Africa relations as an engine for mutually beneficial sustainable development, peace, security and prosperity.
Focac was established in 2000, with the aim to realise shared prosperity and sustainable development for the Chinese and African people, through a commitment to the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. Focac has since evolved into one of the most important platforms for collective dialogue and effective mechanism for practical co-operation between China and Africa, anchored on historical friendship, solidarity, mutual respect and trust.
The summit will be a key diplomatic event that continues the strong ties established during previous Focac summits in 2006, 2015, 2018 and 2021. Chinese President Xi Jinping will open the summit and deliver a keynote address, where he is expected to introduce new initiatives and measures to strengthen co-operation between China and Africa, in line with the aims of the summit. The summit aims to create new avenues for solidarity and co-operation, accelerate mutually shared development, explore ways to strengthen further friendship and co-operation and write a new chapter on building a China-African community with a shared future.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong says the agenda includes a welcome banquet, an opening ceremony and four high-level meetings focusing on state of governance, industrialisation and agricultural modernisation, peace and security and high-quality Belt and Road cooperation. The eighth China-Africa Entrepreneurs’ Conference and other related activities will be held during the summit.
Economic observers suggest that African countries should leverage multilateral opportunities, like the Focac, to shift ties from aid to focussing more on equitable trade relations, improved governance and transparency and approaching trade negotiations either as a continent or regional blocks to boost their economic prospects with the framework of Focac and friendly relations with China.
The 8th Focac Summit in Dakar, Senegal, in 2021, adopted the Dakar Action Plan (2022 to 2024) which offered a comprehensive plan for trade promotion and facilitation, strategic market access and product-value addition. China committed to importing $300 billion worth of goods from Africa between 2022 and 2024. Beijing also offered $10bn to improve the quality of African exports and a credit line of $10bn to help small- and medium-sized enterprises export high-quality products into Chinese markets. However, it is unclear how and whether African countries were able to maximise such benefits, and if so, which countries or sub-regions managed to do so.
Most importantly, China, the second largest economy in the world, is the largest bilateral trading partner with sub-Saharan African countries, with trade volumes amounting to $282.1bn, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Chinese authorities suggest that Sino-African trade for the January to July 2024 period increased year-on-year by 5.5% to $166.6bn as China continues to lead in trade and development partnership with Africa.
As a non-traditional official creditor member of the World Bank/IMF/G20 Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable and the G20 Common Framework and a proactive supporter of debt write-off for least developed countries, China has written off the debts of several African countries, including Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, while remaining a major source of capital for massive infrastructure projects across the continent.
Trade has grown between the two sides as China continues to be Africa’s largest trading partner. Trade with African countries such as South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya and Angola, rapidly rising and expanding beyond minerals, to include agricultural products, cars, manufactured products and ICTS.
In the mining sector, energy transition-related critical materials, such as manganese, graphite, cobalt, nickel, lithium and iron ore, have overtaken traditional precious metals as major commodities of trade, expanding in the volume and quality of trade. Africa has more than 48% in global reserves of various types of critical minerals.
Trade between China and Africa has been growing for several decades, although there are debates about the balance of trade relations. However, at this stage, Africa could benefit more from the expansion of trade, allowing the continent to leverage to extensively diverse resources available on the continent.
The China-Africa Trade Index, published for the first time in 2023, stated that the value of China's imports from and exports to Africa increased from less than 100bn yuan (about $14bn) in 2000 to 1.88 trillion yuan in 2022, a cumulative increase of about 20 times. In 2023, the China-Africa trade volume reached a record high of $282.1bn dollars, an annual increase of 1.5%. China’s imports of agricultural products such as nuts, vegetables, flowers and fruits from African countries increased by 130%, 32%, 14% and 7%, respectively, year on year.
Chinese exports such as vehicles, including electing vehicles, cellphones, computers lithium batteries and photovoltaic products to Africa increased by more than 100%, with some of the technologies playing an important role in strongly driving Africa’s green transition. Increasingly some Chinese companies and businesses are moving to Africa, massively contributing to domestic economic values chains and creating much-needed employment opportunities.
More importantly, African countries could potentially benefit from importing technologies and working towards co-operation mechanisms which could eventually allow them to either produce or assemble such products as cars and computers, at home in ways that allow technological, knowledge and skills transfer and uptake, opening broader investment opportunities into the continent, boosting economic growth and transformation.
The ninth Focac Summit should also focus on speeding Africa’s economic integration as a way of bolstering mutually beneficial economic co-operation, lowering intra-continental barriers to movement of capital, goods and people.
China is proactively supporting the practical steps taken by the AU to enhance the economic integration of its member states. China has indicated its commitment to support the 37th AU Summit’s adoption of Agenda 2063, particularly its focus on enhancing economic integration, infrastructure connectivity and agricultural productivity.
Furthermore, China supports the establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area, launched in 2019 to reduce tariffs, eliminate trade barriers and promote the development of trade and investment in Africa, facilitating the free movement of goods, services and capital across the continent.
The summit should build on further Chinese support and co-operation to deepen regional integration and people-centred socio-economic development in Africa.
Dr Gideon Chitanga is a Post Doc Researcher at the Centre for Africa China Studies.
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