Africa looks forward to seeing the blueprint for the next few years, and envisages the relationship between China and Africa with the frame, noted Robert Okwiri Nagila, Kenyan journalist at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) held in Beijing on Thursday morning.
Having been reporting the FOCAC meetings for the last decade, this time Mr. Nagila expects the forum to sketch a blueprint on how the cooperation between China and Africa is going to look like in the future.
According to him, as the modernization is the core theme of the FOCAC, China has contributed lots of infrastructure projects in Africa such as roads, ports, airports, etc between 2010 and 2020.
"Opening up Africa, more designing Africa's infrastructure bring it for 21st century. That has been largely successful, because now you've got access to markets. Goods can get to the ports for exports," added Nagila.
Given the new phase of African development, based on his observation, China may pay more attention to other areas in Africa, such as sectors of energy, science, and technology, as well as domains of education, people-to-people exchanges, and cultural exchanges.
According to Mr. Nagila, the blueprint must entail strengthening the relations between China and Africa. China has been Africa's largest trading partner for over a decade. Trade volume between the two sides hit 282.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2023.
The huge amount shows the significance of China as a partner for Africa, not only in trade, but also all facets of life in the old continent with relations to China.
Reporter | Clonde Zhang, Xachary Tse
Video | Leo Guo
Editor | Steven Yuen, Will Wei
