CCTV News:The 7th Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was held in Beijing on September 3rd. Since its establishment in 2000, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation has also celebrated its 18th birthday. In the process of continuous maturity, it has promoted the continuous expansion of China-Africa cooperation step by step. The growth track of 18 years has witnessed the deepening of China-Africa friendship, and the scope of cooperation has become broader. From trade, investment and infrastructure construction to personnel training, poverty reduction and income increase, medical assistance and people-to-people exchanges, China is helping Africa to achieve leap-forward development and integrate into globalization in all directions.
18 years: the China-Africa Forum has been growing for 18 years and continuously implementing its commitment plan.
Since the establishment of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum in 2000, China-Africa cooperation has been continuously expanded and deepened. The summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation is held every three years, and the seventh Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was held in Beijing from September 3rd to 4th. The theme of this summit is "win-win cooperation and work together to build a closer community of destiny between China and Africa". At the last China-Africa Cooperation Forum in 2015, China put forward ten cooperation plans between China and Africa, which opened a new stage of win-win and common development of China-Africa cooperation.
Facts have proved that the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation has always played an important role in leading and promoting China-Africa relations in the past 18 years, and actively planned routes for China-Africa cooperation in different periods. Not only that, the forum has also become an effective help to expand the space for China-Africa cooperation. It is not difficult to see from the following figure that with the launch of sub-forums such as civil society and media, China-Africa cooperation has gradually expanded from the initial stage of the forum to the current all-round cooperation in many fields such as politics, economy, security, society, humanities and environment.
Then, after 18 years of growth and deepening of the China-Africa Forum, what achievements have China-Africa "unusual" cooperation made? Let’s use the data to find out.
Number one: the trade volume between China and Africa increased by 16 times in the first half of the year, and China was the largest trading country in Africa for nine consecutive years.
The most direct aspect of China-Africa friendly cooperation is economic and trade exchanges. Since the establishment of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation 18 years ago, the trade volume between China and Africa has increased from 10.6 billion US dollars to 170 billion US dollars, an increase of about 16 times.
In the first half of 2018, the trade volume between China and Africa reached 98.8 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 16%. China has been Africa’s largest trading partner for nine consecutive years since 2009.
Hundreds of thousands of jobs: investment in Africa has created hundreds of thousands of jobs.
In addition, China has become the country with the fastest growth rate of international investment in Africa, with the investment flow increasing from $200 million in 2000 to $2.4 billion in 2016, and the investment stock has also increased from less than $500 million to more than $38 billion in the same period.
China’s investment in Africa has not only created hundreds of thousands of jobs, but also improved Africa’s infrastructure, upgraded Africa’s production technology, promoted Africa’s industrialization and modernization process, and strengthened the public opinion base of China-Africa cooperation.
Over 5,000 kilometers: breaking through the bottleneck of infrastructure, opening up economic veins and building railways and highways over 5,000 kilometers.
It is the common aspiration of African countries to break through the bottleneck of infrastructure and open up the economic veins.
The Kenyan Munne Railway is one of the two most influential century projects undertaken by China on the African continent, and it is known as "the road to prosperity and development". In January this year, the first freight train of Inner Mongolia Railway was put into operation. At present, there are five freight trains running between Nairobi, the capital, and Mombasa, the largest port in East Africa, saving at least 40% of logistics costs. The Inner Mongolia Railway drives Kenya’s GDP growth by about 1.5% every year, creating 46,000 jobs directly for the local area. Since the reform and opening up, China has built more than 5,000 kilometers of railways and highways for African countries.
In addition to helping traffic infrastructure construction, the expansion project of Kariba South Bank Hydropower Station, which was built by Chinese enterprises in Zimbabwe in southern Africa, was completed in March this year. The total installed capacity of Kariba Hydropower Station increased from 750,000 kilowatts to 1.05 million kilowatts, which increased the power supply for Zimbabwe by 20% to 30%, effectively alleviating the power shortage in the country.
如今，从铁路、公路到机场、港口、水电站，中国承建的基础设施项目遍布非洲大陆，非洲国家正在逐步跟上经济全球化的步伐。
15万人次：授人以渔 两年提供了15万人次的专业人才培训
习主席曾深刻指出，中非关系最大的“义”，就是用中国发展助力非洲的发展，最终实现互利共赢、共同发展；不仅“授人以鱼”、提供不附加任何政治条件的对非援助，更要“授人以渔”、加强人力资源开发合作和技术交流。
“与当地人才共同成长、与当地经济互利共赢”的中非合作模式，如今已遍及非洲大陆。自2015年年底中非合作论坛约翰内斯堡峰会以来，中国高度重视非洲发展能力建设，两年多来已向非洲国家提供了15万人次的专业人才培训，向非洲学生提供了3万个奖学金名额。
今年6月，“蒙内铁路”承建中企发布报告显示，该项目已累计雇佣当地员工超过7.2万人，培养了数以万计的熟练工人和5000多名铁路技术人才；并通过合作办学，让超过2000名当地学生通过了铁路运营相关专业培训，他们将成为当地未来铁路运营、维护的中坚力量。
Increase production by 140%: Promote rice planting techniques in China to increase production by 140% so that African people can get rid of poverty as soon as possible.
China has always been anxious and considerate of African countries, as it has been for decades. The data shows that 70% of the population in Africa is agricultural, and the contribution rate of agriculture to Africa’s GDP is as high as 30%. However, many African countries have weak agricultural infrastructure, backward technology, frequent natural disasters and social unrest, and food security cannot be guaranteed. China put forward China-Africa cooperation plans such as "reducing poverty and benefiting the people" and "agricultural modernization", and once again stressed the need to share agricultural development experience with Africa, transfer applicable agricultural technologies and increase the income of local farmers.
In China Agricultural Technology Demonstration Center, the rice yield per mu increased from 237kg to 570kg by 140% after adopting China rice planting technology.
At present, China rice planting technology has more than 15,000 mu of high-yield demonstration model fields in the Dakawa rice-growing area of Morogoro province, which directly benefits more than 2,000 farmers. China has also built a farm in Zambia. Over the past 24 years, Zhongken Farm has solved the employment problem of more than 4,200 people and solved the food and clothing problem of more than 15,000 people — — After careful calculation, the farm supplies more than 45,000 tons of grain, 260 million fresh eggs and 3.71 million broilers and laying hens to the local market.
Up to now, experts and technicians from China have implemented more than 300 small-scale demonstration projects in nine African countries, popularized 450 practical agricultural technologies and trained nearly 30,000 local farmers and technicians.
Over 200 million: medical assistance relieves the pain of over 200 million African patients.
In addition to solving the problem of "lack of food", the China-Africa cooperation project is also committed to alleviating the plight of African people who "look down on illness". In Zambia, over the past 40 years, there have been 20 batches of China medical teams with 546 members who have treated more than 3 million patients in Zambia, performed more than 20,000 operations of various types, and introduced and implemented more than 700 new technologies and projects.
In 2006, 108,000 cases of malaria were reported in Comoros, resulting in 34 deaths. In 2007, the anti-malaria team from China entered Comoros. By 2014, only over 2,000 cases of malaria were reported in the whole country, and zero deaths were achieved.
After the Ebola outbreak in West African countries in 2014, China took the lead in helping African brothers to fight the epidemic. For more than half a century, tens of thousands of foreign aid doctors in China have relieved more than 200 million African patients.
23.7%: African students studying in China increased by 23.7% year-on-year during the five years of promoting cultural integration.
Unusual cooperation has also promoted cultural exchanges between China and Africa. At present, there are nearly 2 million people-to-people exchanges between China and Africa every year, and China has opened more than 80 Confucius Institutes and classrooms in 41 African countries. In 2017 alone, China and Africa held more than 100 humanities exchange activities and implemented more than 200 humanities cooperation projects.
Since 2000, the Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation has promised to provide funds and support for African education in China and abroad. According to statistics, during the five years from 2012 to 2016, the total number of international students from Africa in China was 61,594, which was the fastest growing among international students from all continents, with a year-on-year increase of 23.7%.
One-third: in-depth cooperation for one-third of the world’s progress
From brothers in distress to comprehensive strategic partners, China-Africa friendship has been deepening and China-Africa cooperation has been escalating. The data shows that the total population of Central Africa has exceeded 2.6 billion in 2017, accounting for about 35% of the world’s total population; Central Africa has a total land area of 39.8 million square kilometers, accounting for about 30% of the world’s total land area (except Antarctica). The progress of China-Africa relations under the guidance of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation means that one-third of the world is advancing, which goes beyond the "holding a group to keep warm" among developing countries, and marks that South-South cooperation in the 21st century is glowing under the background of the new era and China’s efforts to build a community of global destiny.
(CCTV reporter Zhu Ruijun Guan Weina)
