4/9/2024–|Last update: 5/9/202409:31 AM (Makkah Time)
Chinese President Xi Jinping opens the ninth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation on Thursday, where he is expected to urge African leaders gathered in Beijing to absorb more Chinese goods in return for pledges of loans and investment.
The triennial forum, which officially kicked off yesterday evening with a welcome dinner for the 50 participating African countries and concludes on Friday, also saw negotiations on cooperation documents that will chart the course for China-Africa relations through 2027. China approved $4.61 billion in loans to Africa last year, the first annual increase since 2016.
What does China offer?
The world’s largest bilateral lender wants to shrink its investment portfolio and reposition its relationships with developing economies around Chinese President Xi Jinping’s new slogan of “small and beautiful projects” rather than expensive infrastructure.
Infrastructure was mentioned only once in Xi’s speech at the last summit in Dakar in 2021, when he pledged to support 10 projects to improve connectivity among African countries.
Analysts expect the Chinese leader to talk about the competitiveness of its green technologies, which the United States and Europe say have excess capacity and for which Beijing needs to find buyers, as well as plans for technology transfer and more trade.
China could also pledge to increase the amount available to African central banks and companies through credit lines, having pledged $10 billion at the last summit, as well as support the development of digital finance and e-payment systems.
What do African leaders want?
African leaders will seek faster financing solutions to the growing debt crisis across the continent in Beijing’s 2025-2027 FOCAC Action Plan, as well as new investment pledges and job-creating guarantee projects proposed in Dakar.
On Monday, South Africa’s president assured his Chinese counterpart of his country’s desire to narrow its trade deficit with Beijing, an ambition shared by almost all African nations, and to which leaders hope China will respond with better terms for its agricultural and natural resource exports.
Participants will also be looking for assurances that China will fulfill a 2021 summit pledge that it will buy $300 billion worth of African goods. Analysts say Beijing’s phytosanitary market access barriers are so strict that African food exporters are unable to sell into the $1.4 billion consumer market.
Throughout the week, African leaders also met with Chinese companies to encourage them to set up manufacturing hubs in their countries, to help boost their industrial sectors.
What’s happening in Beijing?
On Tuesday, China’s foreign and trade ministers met with delegates at the Diaoyutai Guesthouse in Beijing, to begin discussions on two documents: the Action Plan for 2024-2027, and a report on the implementation of what was agreed at the last summit in Dakar.
The two documents will be finalized and signed by all participating leaders on the last day of the forum.
It is noteworthy that the African and Chinese negotiating teams have met at least twice a year since the last forum in Senegal in 2021, but this high-level meeting provides the presidents with an opportunity to personally participate in the negotiations.
Since their arrival, Xi has already met with more than 20 heads of state at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People in the days leading up to the summit, according to Chinese state media.
This year’s forum is the first in-person summit since COVID-19, with the Dakar meeting held online.
Both Chinese and African leaders use the gathering to hold various bilateral meetings.
