China’s strategy in Africa is evolving. A few years ago we saw an emphasis on raw commodity exports in exchange for Chinese consumer goods imports.
This has now been supplemented by Chinese loans and grants policies that address Africa’s core infrastructure needs while also providing a breaking ground for China’s emerging multinational engineering corporations.
While many have discussed the positive and negative aspects of China’s involvement in Africa, the consensus though is that its successes will be largely determined by the quality of leadership and the extent to which these policies are implemented.
China increased the China-Africa Development Fund to 10 billion US dollars and set up a new $10 billion fund focusing on China-Africa industrial capacity cooperation. Financial institutions such as the Export-Import Bank of China have been setting up branches in Africa. A number of joint-venture banks have also been established.
These institutions serve the purpose of providing financing services for infrastructure construction such as the Mombasa–Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway, jointly-built industrial parks, and cotton cultivation programs etc, meanwhile offering strong financial support and service guarantees for the industrialization and modernization of Africa.
The next story in our series on FOCAC explains how China-Africa financial cooperation has made a qualitative substantial breakthrough.
The video was produced by CRI.
