Beijing, Sept. 03 — The People’s Republic of China Director General of the Department of Regional Opening-up of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) says they are committed to further deepening cooperation with Africa.
Mr. Xu Jianping said this during a media briefing ahead of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). He was giving a brief on the achievements of China-Africa cooperation in building the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
He said that the key four areas include deepening strategic alignment where he said they will continue to implement existing cooperation agreements and expand cooperation to more African countries.
He said that China will deepen connectivity saying that they will further improve Africa’s infrastructure, promote trade and investment facilitation as well as enhancing people to people exchanges.
“We will also deepen new areas of cooperation thus we will continue to expand cooperation in new areas such as digital economy, green development and innovation”, he said.
Again he highlighted that they will deepen coordination by establishing more cooperation mechanisms with African countries to coordinate and solve problems in cooperation.
On the other hand, he indicated that China and Africa have made a significant progress in aligning their development strategies with 52 African countries and the African Union (AU). “We have established a high level consensus on the principles, goals and key areas of cooperation”, he added.
He stated that China has participated in the construction of over 10,000 kilometers of railways, 100,000 kilometers of highways, nearly 1,000 bridges and 100 ports in Africa which he said have improved Africa’s infrastructure and promoted economic development.
Moreover he noted China has implemented various projects to improve people’s livelihoods in Africa including poverty reduction, agriculture, education and talent training.
He added that they have also established the Belt and Road Scholarship to promote people to people exchanges.
Meanwhile, China has cooperation with about 52 African countries to date.
