FOCAC Summit to open doors for further China-Africa cooperation: SA official

The upcoming Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Summit is very significant as it will open doors for further China-Africa cooperation, a senior South African Government official said on Wednesday.

The summit is expected to produce new partnership initiatives, Ambassador Ghulam Asmal, from the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation, said in Pretoria while addressing journalists at a media workshop to discuss content, programme and media arrangements for the summit.

The summit will be held in Johannesburg on December 4-5, 2015 under the theme : "Africa-China Progressing Together: Win-Win Cooperation for Common Development".

"We envisage that a new level of beneficial development will be announced and the summit will give impetus to Africa's developmental agenda," Asmal said.

"We expect more skills exchange and also China to help Africa develop its's industrial development," he said.

He said China had been negotiating with 41 African countries about the Programme of Action which would be unveiled at the summit.

African diplomats have been holding meetings in China on the FOCAC Summit Declaration and other documents to be signed at the summit, he disclosed.

Representatives from governments and businesses will engage and discuss areas of concern including debt relief, science and technology investment promotion, unemployment especially among the youth and poverty eradication, Asmal said.

"We want China to assist us in our infrastructural development so that we can improve our competitiveness,"he said.

Some other areas to be addressed are water and sanitation, transport and education, according to Asmal.

African countries, he said, also want to use the FOCAC Summit to boost South-South cooperation and North-South cooperation.

"FOCAC does not replace our relationship with the rest of the world like the EU and others. It actually complements it. FOCAC helps Africa to integrate with the world," Asmal said.

Africa takes the summit seriously which will be a meeting of equal partners and not a donor conference, Asmal said.

"This is not a donor conference and there will be no hand-outs. This is a meeting of equal partners who will be mapping a way forward to the relationship (between Africa and China). Many African countries have showed tremendous enthusiasm towards the summit. They have shown excitement and tremendous expectations,"he said.

Asmal also said the recent slowdown of the Chinese economy will not affect the summit and the relationship between China and Africa as a whole.

"Our discussion will center on socio-economic upliftment of the African people. We want to know how China within a short space of time managed to reduce poverty and developed to be an industrial giant. We want to convince China as a partner to help us develop our industrial capacity and beneficiation,"he noted.

"We want China to help us to access the Chinese market especially from our manufacturing and agricultural products. We are positive that this relationship will grow and yield positive yields going forward. We have a common agenda of a win-win situation," he said. Enditem