Africa-Press – Eritrea. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is on a four day tour which will take him to the African countries of Eritrea, Kenya, and the Comoro Islands. He will be continuing an over three decades-long tradition of China’s top diplomat starting the New Year with the first diplomatic visit to the continent of Africa.
The main purpose of his visit is to affirm China’s long term commitment to its ties with the continent, and pave the way for the implementation of agreements reached at the Eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held in Dakar, Senegal in November of 2021.
His visit is not only significant for highlighting the implementation of the nine cooperation programmes agreed to at the FOCAC Ministerial Conference, but also for the fact that this trip is taking place at a time that the world is battling the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.
His visit will also be closely monitored, especially considering that the economic challenges that have plagued Africa have only been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Across the continent jobs have been lost, poverty rates have risen, and productivity has plummeted.
China, on the other hand, has achieved early success in restoring their economy to prepandemic normalcy. Their experience positions them well to support countries that are currently facing similar challenges.
China has always been saying that these challenges will better be addressed through cooperation. As was seen after the global economic crisis of 2008 the concepts of “support and cooperation” has changed.
Where the donor-recipient model of cooperation is now seen to be inconsistent with new economic needs, China prefers to pursue partnership models that result in win-win results for both.
This beneficial cooperation has been a frequent approach made by China in its cooperation with African countries.
The greatest need for African countries at the moment, including countries such as Tanzania, is investment opportunities that can provide employment, increased tax revenue, and natural resources exploration which result in economic growth.
Other needs are equipment and technologies for increased local production, as well as expanded markets for our products. Fortunately, at the Dakar ministerial meeting and other preceding FOCAC meetings, these issues were discussed and are now being implemented.
Data provided by independent sources show that progress is being made to that end. Statistics from the China-Africa Research Institute (CARI) at Johns Hopkins University, shows that China is the biggest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Africa, surging from $ 75 million in 2003 to $ 4.2 billion in 2020. In the first nine months of last year alone, China’s direct investment to Africa reached $ 2.59 billion, a 9.9% increase on yearly basis.
Trade flows between China and Africa also registered a steady increase, its value increasing from $ 185 billion in 2018 to $ 192 billion in 2019.
Tanzania has also benefited from the many opportunities offered directly by China. In the recent past we have witnessed China and Tanzania signing agreements on importation of agricultural products from Tanzania, such as dry cassava, soybeans, and sesame seeds.
With these agreements and other arrangements with China, decades of an outcry of a lack of markets for our agricultural products will be a thing of the past. Recently the Tanzanian Embassy in Beijing has been making great efforts to unlock even more market opportunities for even more agricultural products, various mineral products, and tourism.
Small scale businesses in Tanzanian are also benefiting from this cooperative relationship. Traders going to Guangzhou to import goods and Chinese are coming to Tanzania to sell their products.
These relationships have helped directly improve the lives of ordinary Tanzanians, be it food vendors who can now have the better equipment for their businesses or peasants and smallscale farmers who now have better tools for their work.
The donor-recipient kind of relations between Africa and China, or between Africa and others is a thing of the past. Many studies have shown that this kind of relationship is not only unsustainable, but also in certain cases it does harm than good to the recipient.
It is investments which can provide job opportunities and add to tax revenues, it is markets for agricultural products, technology transfer which can help improve local production. It is in this kind of partnership where you get win-win outcome.
There is a multitude of avenues for cooperation with China apart from FOCAC and “Belt and Road” initiative, which can be beneficial for our country. What we are taping now from China is just a drop in the ocean. It is up to us on how we make good use of this long-term friendship with China.
The good thing is that the attitude of Chinese authorities about China’s development is that it has to benefit all with the aim of building a community of a shared future for mankind.
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