China’s Xi pledges $60 bln for development in Africa

To illustrate his point, Shinyekwa mentioned a case of China-Africa production capacity cooperation-a leather factory in Ethiopia.

However, the summit comes at a time of slowing growth in China compounded by rising wages that make the world’s second biggest economy less competitive.

“Another rail project that will be up for renegotiation is the 8.3 billion Dollars Lagos-Kano standard gauge modernisation project, of which only a segment, Kaduna-Abuja has reached completion stage”.

President Xi said China will offer 1,000 more scholarships to Kenyans during the bilateral meeting that was cordial and friendly. There was also a high-level business engagement with heads of state and government. China promised to building a new parliament for the government. “Others might want to imagine it’s some form of colonization, but we haven’t been pressured by anyone except by our own effort for what the Chinese are bringing”. Meanwhile, it also provided jobs for many local residents, he said. “The SGR Project has now been extended to Naivasha, to be completed in December 2018”, he said.

Some of the plans aim to accelerate Africa’s industrialisation and agricultural modernisation and achieve sustainable self-development.

China’s broader trade relationship with Africa has grown even more rapidly, to $222 billion last year, a record that made China the continent’s top trade partner for the sixth straight year.

He cited the Zambian copper industry as an example of how increasing trade imbalances between China and Africa in recent months was due to price changes, not demand fluctuations.

Its investments in Africa amounted to $32.4 billion at the end of 2014, according to London-based BMI Research. “So there is not an expectation that we in Africa are expecting handouts”, said Ghulam Hoosein Asmal, a senior official in South Africa’s foreign affairs ministry. For the purposes of “consultation on an equal footing, better mutual understanding, expanded consensus, deeper friendship and closer cooperation”, the Forum, with China and 50 African countries which have established diplomatic relations with China as participants, has played an instrumental role in promoting the political, economic, social and cultural cooperation between the two parts of the world.

China and Africa should work together to translate superiority of their friendship into momentum for win-win cooperation and common development, and translate rich natural and human resources on the continent into economic power and people’s wellbeing, the Chinese president said at the banquet.

He called on African leaders to be ready for an improved relation with China, adding that China was ready to take relation with Africa to the next level in a mutually beneficial cooperation.

Earlier, President Kenyatta met the China Communication Construction Company (CCCC) Chairman Mr. Liu Qi Tao and discussed the progress of the SGR construction.