Photo: Leaders of Tanzania, Zambia, and China witness the signing of the memorandum of understanding to revitalize the TAZARA railway at FOCAC. Credit: X/@mfa_tanzania
The ninth Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) drew to a close in Beijing leaving China and 53 (out of the 54) African countries with an action plan to “jointly drive modernization that is just and equitable … open and win-win.” This historic record of deals upgrading bilateral cooperation will continue to increase the productive capacity of African countries in areas of industry, agriculture, infrastructure, trade and investment — striving to build a model that is exemplary of the Global Development Initiative. The GDI was proposed at the General Debate of the 76th UN General Assembly in 2021. It calls for development as a priority, a people-centered approach, harmony between man and nature, benefits for all, innovation-driven development, and results-oriented action. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres joined as a special guest alongside heads of several other international organizations, including the African Union, as summit observers.
FOCAC summit was first formed in 2000 as a platform of collective consultation and dialogue to develop cooperation between China and Africa in areas such as economic and trade relations. As stated by president of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa, it is the principal instrument for China-Africa relations.
Significant step toward Africa’s prosperity and development
On Thursday Sept. 5, a comprehensive action plan of the FOCAC and declaration were adopted qualitatively raising the characterization of China-Africa relations to that of an “all-weather China-Africa community with a shared future for a new era.” To be implemented in three years, the action plan covers 10 partnership initiatives which concretely address all aspects of modernization in Africa through mutual learning among civilizations, trade prosperity, industrial chain cooperation, connectivity, development cooperation, healthcare, rural revitalization and people’s wellbeing, people-to-people exchanges, green development, and common security.
In order for these initiatives to be successful, China will provide Africa with RMB360 billion yuan ($50.69 billion) over the next three years. It is worth noting that in 2023, lending from China to Africa was at its highest annual increase since the start of the pandemic, providing $4.61 billion. Additionally, China will grant duty-free treatment to 100% of the tariff lines of products from the least developed countries with which it has ties. This is meant to allow the least developed African nations to export goods to China and develop a larger opportunity to generate profit and compete with other products in China’s market at a lower cost to them. Per the action plan, this will be a result of China voluntarily and unilaterally widening its market providing a big opportunity for Africa.
It is a shared consensus across governments in Africa that industrialization is the essence of development. This widening in trade and investment is representative of a form of capitalist development but must be understood in terms of how it increases the productive forces within different economic sectors of African nations and provides the working class in Africa with direct employment opportunities for millions. It is also necessary to contrast this with the West’s neoliberal structural adjustment programs, debt, and exploitation that has completely ravaged African nations. Among the several notable initiatives are the plans to implement 30 infrastructure projects in Africa, build a multimodal sea-rail transport network connecting China’s central and western regions to Africa, launch 30 clean energy projects, and provide 60,000 training opportunities in programs primarily focused on empowering women and youth development — bringing a high-quality Belt and Road cooperation.
China and Africa at its ‘best period in history’
Africa serves as the largest source of raw materials for Europe and North America, yet the continent is reduced to marginal standards in the global economy. As a result of colonial and imperialist intervention by Western countries, the ability for Africa to raise its industrial capacity to a high caliber in the global economy has been a challenge. In this context, the division of labor and collaboration in the industrial sector is incomplete.
In Xi Jinping’s keynote speech, he stated: “Modernization is an inalienable right of all countries. But the Western approach to it has inflicted immense sufferings on developing countries. Since the end of World War II, Third World nations, represented by China and African countries, have achieved independence and development one after another, and have been endeavoring to redress the historical injustices of the modernization process”
Relations between China and Africa have been rooted in fostering the right of African nations’ self-determination, sovereignty, and ability to prosper in a different kind of global economic order based on mutually beneficial cooperation. As many African nations in the 20th century were gaining independence through national liberation struggles, China, among several growing independent countries at the time, sought strategic cooperation based on the same principles of the newly independent nations of Asia and Africa. One striking example can be examined in the 1968 Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA) project which was completed in 1975. The TAZARA railway project was built as a symbol of Pan-African socialism and resistance to colonialism, exporting copper and cobalt without relying on colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and apartheid South Africa. China lent an interest-free $400 million towards the project at the time. In February of this year, China proposed to spend $1 billion to rehabilitate the rail line through a public-private partnership model. On Sept. 4, Tanzania, Zambia, and China signed a memorandum of understanding to revitalize the railway as part of improving rail-sea transportation.
Africa can concretely develop through the FOCAC’s continued emphasis on industrial capacity cooperation and industrialization for the continent. This is realized through three main aspects: (1) the construction of industrial parks, (2) the synergy of infrastructure construction and industrial investment, and (3) a focus on production that is suitable for local markets synergizing with local development and generating sustained momentum for industrialization — meeting the local conditions of African nations. To restate, the projects developed within these core foci connect the African nation’s industrial chain from operations to logistics, raising industrialization to a larger scale while training tens of thousands of Africans to gain critical technical skills for maintaining the industrial capacity within their own countries.
The era of friendship
The West continues to impose its imperialist “rules based order” onto the rest of the world through pouring billions into the proxy war in Ukraine, funding the genocide in Gaza, intervening in the sovereign and democratic elections of socialist countries, and pushing sanctions onto the Global South. Meanwhile, countries within Africa are undergoing revolutionary changes from the overthrow of neocolonial regimes to the popular movements against poor governance of current Western puppets. Tides are shifting eastward and the rise in multipolarity must continue pushing toward the goals of national sovereignty, dignity, and self-determination. This is maintained by revolutionary socialist principles that highlight what international solidarity looks like between countries of the Global South.
Since 2013, Xi has put forward the principles of China’s Africa policy — sincerity, real results, amity, and good faith. FOCAC is a clear demonstration of these principles in practice. As the next decade is laid out as a result of the agreed upon declaration from the 2024 summit, we can continue to see the reality of China-Africa relations as characterized from Xi’s concluding point of the keynote speech for the summit:
“As an African proverb goes, a friend is someone you share the path with. On the path to modernization, no one, and no country, should be left behind. Let us rally the more than 2.8 billion Chinese and African people into a powerful force on our shared path toward modernization, promote modernization of the Global South with China-Africa modernization, and write a new magnificent chapter of development in human history. Let us join hands to bring about a bright future of peace, security, prosperity and progress for our world.”
