On December 23, “The Fifth Africa Lecture: The 20th Anniversary of the Founding of the FOCAC” was held online. The main venue of the lecture was located at the China-Africa Institute (CAI) in Beijing. Two African scholars were invited to deliver keynote speeches via Zoom. The first speaker was Professor Peter Kagwanja, president and chief executive of the Africa Policy Institute in Kenya, and his speech mainly focused on “Breaking the traps: FOCAC and the Provision of Global Public Good in Africa.” The second speaker was Dr. Ali Issa Abdi, a managing director of the Horn Economic and Social Policy Institute in Ethiopia, and his speech topic was “On Cooperation between China and the Horn of Africa in the context of the FOCAC and the Belt and Road Initiative.” More than 60 Chinese and African scholars and experts attended the lecture.
Professor Li Xinfeng presided over the lecture
Li Xinfeng, a senior research fellow and executive vice-president of the CAI, presided over the Lecture and indicated that through two decades of rapid development, the FOCAC has become an important framework for collective dialogues and an effective mechanism for comprehensive cooperation between China and Africa. The year 2020 marks the 20th anniversary of the FOCAC, a new historical coordinate for China-Africa friendship, and a new step towards building a closer China-Africa community with a shared future. The year 2020 also witnessed the further consolidation of China-Africa traditional friendship amid global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the most severe global public health emergency the human history has ever known, when the Extraordinary Summit on Solidarity Against the COVID-19 Pandemic explored new opportunities to strengthen China-Africa collaboration amid the unprecedented health crisis. In the congratulatory letter to commemorate the FOCAC’s 20th anniversary, Chinese President H.E. Xi Jinping and the co-chair of FOCAC, Senegalese President H.E. Macky Sall noted that as an dynamic platform and effective mechanism for China-Africa dialogues and cooperation, and a banner for South-South cooperation, FOCAC will benefit the Chinese and African peoples through synergy of China’s two centenary goals and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
Professor Peter Kagwanja gave lecture
Professor Kagwanja pointed out that the FOCAC has for the last twenty years offered an unprecedented platform that has enhanced China-African economic and cultural relations. FOCAC has helped remodel Africa’s growth from a development model that values quantity to one that prizes quality and efficiency. The ambition of the strategic partnership in enhancing connectivity, infrastructure development and industrialization in Africa is therefore founded upon mutual agreement, with China offering the “accumulated industrial, technological and production capacity and financial resources.” China had supported the implementation of over 200 infrastructure projects These infrastructures have made a big difference in Africa’s economic and social development. Cooperation in international affairs has also been a key fruit of China’s Africa policy. There has been increased coordination of positions on international and regional issues pertaining to state sovereignty, territorial integrity, and human rights. The 2021 FOCAC Summit in Senegal has to re-focus the FOCAC’s agenda to combating diseases as threats to development cooperation. FOCAC needs to explore a sustainable policy framework of enhancing health diplomacy to combat future epidemics.
Dr. Ali Issa Abdi gave lecture
Dr. Abdi said that over the past 20 years, the FOCAC has considerably enhanced the cooperation and friendship of China and Africa, and the Belt and Road Initiative could further strengthen the relationships built over the period. In many African countries the state of economic infrastructure has been transformed through cooperation with public and private entities from China. The cooperation has also been broadened in to social areas particularly in building the educational and health institutional capacities, and to strengthen knowledge base and human resources across multiple productive sectors to assist in independent development. The deepening cooperation of the mutual beneficial China-Africa relations under the FOCAC for the past twenty years has been immensely effective in the core areas of engagement, such as the development of trade facilitation, investment promotion and access to finance. Under the FOCAC and the BRI, the current effective practices should be further strengthened and deepened. The Chinese and African think tanks and research institutions should work in the collective efforts to generate and disseminate knowledge to solve the issues of poverty reduction, unsustainable debt accumulation and climate change which the Horn of African countries are facing to.
Professor He Wenping in Q&A
Professor Zhang Yongpeng in Q&A
Professor Liu Naiya in Q&A
Dr. Zhang Mengying in Q&A
Professor He Wenping, Zhang Yongpeng, Liu Naiya and Dr. Zhang Mengying interacted with two African lecturers in Q&A regarding topics of African general public’s attitude towards China-Africa relations, current situation in Ethiopia, China-Africa collaboration, COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine in Africa.
Two lecturers in Q&A
Main venue of the lecture
Main venue of the lecture
“Africa Lecture” is one of the brand projects initiated by the CAI, which aims to invite relevant African scholars, experts and Chinese scholars in the field of African studies to give presentations of major realistic issues about African development and the China-African relations.