China Stuns Analysts With $60B New Financial Support For Africa

Cao said China was working with a team in the financial services sector on the circulation of the Chinese currency, yuan in Zimbabwe and may consider developing models such as the Ethiopian one, where China gives credit and the country may pay back in tobacco for instance.

The Chinese president urged the two countries to take the fulfillment of the summit’s consensus as an opportunity to deepen their cooperation in various areas, saying that China is willing to help the Somali people to realize lasting peace and national reconstruction.

It was Xi’s second trip to the remote African continent as president.

China will adhere to the friendly policy in conducting its relations with Somalia, Xi noted during a meeting with the Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on the sidelines of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit held in Johannesburg.

At previous China-Africa summits, Beijing has doubled its financial support for Africa every three years: from $5-billion in 2006 to $10-billion in 2009 and then to $20-billion in 2012.

Even as its economy slows, China has wowed its African allies with an impressive display of political promises and a staggering $60-billion (U.S.) in new financial support.

The FOCAC groups China, 50 African countries that have established diplomatic ties with China, and the Commission of the African Union. “We are obviously aligned and are on the same page for development”, he said.

“Africa tends to remember people that stick with them in the hard times and it’s not been a great year generally speaking for most of Africa because of low commodity prices and the strength of the dollar”, Michael Power, a money manager at Investec Asset Management, said by phone from Cape Town on Friday. After decades of helping African countries build infrastructure and providing aid, China has seen more companies in Africa expand their presence in other wider fields such as agriculture, transportation and environmental protection. China’s capacity and technology, in particular, suit well the current development needs of African countries.

Both mutual and multilateral cooperation has entered a new period, Chung said, suggesting that the two sides should better combine China’s development experience and production capacity and Africa’s natural and human resources. Based on China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, China’s new way of Africa has to do with “making sure that this world will be fairer, more secure and more inclusive”.

“We have the responsibility and the capability to play a bigger role in global affairs”.