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FOCAC Summit achieves more than expected: SA president

Xinhua, December 7, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) has achieved more than African countries expected, South African President Jacob Zuma said on Sunday.

The summit has achieved the goal of living up to the expectations of the African people, Zuma said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua in Johannesburg.

Zuma and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping co-chaired the summit on Dec. 4-5.

"We felt that this summit must do better than other summits. We prepared for it, I think all sides prepared for it, particularly China," Zuma said.

At the summit, President Xi put forward a massive plan to carry out 10 major cooperation projects in the coming three years in Africa with support from China and urged the two sides to strengthen five "pillars" to lift their time-honored win-win partnership to a higher level.

The summit also adopted the Johannesburg Declaration and Action Plan which outline specific steps to promote China-Africa cooperation.

"The announcement of 10-point plan gave sufficient evidence to us that China listens to what Africa is saying. Therefore, China didn't come with its own thought-out ideas. It actually met the expectations to African leaders," Zuma told Xinhua.

With the 10-point plan, major progress will be made in Africa's development, particularly in infrastructure and energy sector which have seen setbacks in the past, Zuma noted.

When asked about how Africa and China should tap the potentials of Africa-China cooperation, Zuma said Africa has its homework to do.

"We are going to add impetus in our own kind of plans. We've started some of them but the result will always be a challenge. I think China has helped us to address that issue," he said.

Zuma listed industrialization, infrastructure, agriculture and health as four priorities of Africa's cooperation with China.

The president added with 1.1 billion population of Africa and 1.3 billion population of China, the two sides can create a huge market and attract global investments. Enditem