#China’s President Xi Jinping pledges $60 Billion for Africa #FOCAC

Xi said his government will cancel outstanding debts for Africa’s least developed countries.

Among the key proposals are the development of 200 poverty eradication projects in African villages, construction of an African disease control center, upgrading of local hospitals in Africa and establishment of five transportation universities.

“The reality does not conform to this distorted, imaginative picture”, Mugabe said, adding the relationship went much further and was deepening into a multi-faceted one, based on China’s vision of peaceful development and win-win cooperation. “Leaders of both sides attach great importance to this issue”, Special Representative of the Chinese Government on African Affairs Zhong Jianhua said, without elaborating.

To a round of applause from the 50 African Heads of State attending the summit, President Xi said Africa belongs to Africans and that “African affairs should be handled by the African people”.

“China is always committed and in a position to help sustain development with technology, equipment, professionals and personnel and capital”.

A cartoon picture of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Johannesburg, South Africa.

While China has emerged during this period as many countries’ biggest trade partner, this year’s summit comes amid a slump in global commodity prices, raising questions in some quarters over whether Chinese motivation in Africa is overly concerned with resource extraction and associated infrastructure. China is now Africa’s largest trading partner and given the lack of economic growth which is needed to fund its own development, the investment will be a welcome relief.

Noting that the China-proposed “Belt and Road” initiative is important to Africa, they extended their welcome for China’s participation in railways, roads, ports building projects across the continent, as well as the country’s help for Africa in production capacity building.

Xi Jinping (centre left) watches traditional dancers with Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe (centre right) in Harare on December 1, 2015 China’s President Xi Jinping visited Zimbabwe on December 1 on a rare trip by a world leader to a country shunned by Western powers over President Robert Mugabe’s widely-criticised record on human rights.

“Here is a man representing our continent; what he is doing for us is what the people that colonized us yesterday should have done”. Mr. Gao also stressed that e-commerce, new energy and finance and push for a more active role in Africa’s aviation and tourism sectors – areas of growing Chinese strengths – will be priority sectors in the future.

On Friday the summit exhibited photos showing FOCAC achievements and also held a China-Africa manufacturing exhibition.

Meanwhile, overall trade between South Africa and China dropped three percent, which meant China’s exports to South Africa had risen and so had South Africa’s trade deficit.