Africa and China take a step forward to implement the action plan of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Summit, which was held in Beijing, in September 2024. The experts believe that the future of the partnership between the two nations is bright.
They observed that the summit has displayed renewed relations and development prospects between the two parties.
Considering this, the experts who spoke at the webinar, last week, said to focus on the ‘small and beautiful’ projects. The partnerships on soft infrastructure projects and the enhancements of people-to people exchanges that will result in brining the impactful outcomes.
Reportedly, the webinar was organised by the Africa-China Centre for Policy and Advisory that was based in Ghana.
Referring to this, a postdoctoral teaching fellow at Tsinghua University – Yi Wushuang said that the idea aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and follows the African Union Agenda 2063.
She said this while commenting on China’s announcement during the FOCAC Summit which will carry out 1,000 ‘small and beautiful’ projects in Africa.
Wushuang also advised to focus more on ‘small and beautiful’ projects that will directly benefit the local communities without extending the financial resources.
In her statement, she also mentioned that China is providing smaller projects that enables to prioritize high-quality investments, especially to foster the local empowerment.
According to her it is important, as it aligns with the SDGs to mitigate potential financial risks.
Founder and Chief Executive of Network Media – Wang Yuehan said that under the ‘small and beautiful’ projects initiative, China is planning to build medical healthcare as well as to hold sports connectivity and festivals with Africans. It is a great move that will solve the soft infrastructure needs in the continent.
There is a lot that still needs to be done on people-to-people exchanges, said Yuehan. According to her, there is a need to work on academic exchanges, between think tanks and cultural exchanges.
All these should be pushed by both the Chinese government and African institutions, said Yuehan.
Wang Yuehan also termed FOCAC as a lens that shows the changing world and noted that the changing themes or topics in FOCAC represents the change in China’s development and success. It also reflects the changing trends of the global economy and politics.
The infrastructure projects conducted by the Chinese firms in Africa are now focusing on areas such as digital technology, vocational training and capacity building, said Wang.
She added that through China-Africa digital technology cooperation, the continent is paving its way towards the development in digital economy. It will learn from China which has greatly developed its e-commerce sector.
Wang expressed that Africa needs to build a strong digital infrastructure to attract Chinese businesses, especially over online models.