Interview: Cote d'Ivoire president urges enhanced Africa-China ties

Cote d'Ivoire's President Alassane Ouattara has urged Africa and China to deepen their ties for mutual benefit.

The president was speaking to Xinhua over the weekend in Abidjan after returning from the Johannesburg Summit of Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in South Africa.

"Africa, with its natural resources, youthful population and its development needs constitute a continent of tomorrow. It is therefore important that China and Africa unite to complement each other for the benefit of their respective economies and improvement of the quality of life for their populations," Ouattara said.

He said China was a very important nation on the global economic map.

"China is a great economic power that is represented on the global market by a good number of companies, both public and private," Ouattara said, adding the commercial ties between China and Africa had been reinforced in recent years.

For Cote d'Ivoire, he said the country's relations with China had been considerably deepened.

"Cooperation between our two countries covers divers sectors, especially technical assistance, infrastructure, culture and financial assistance," he said.

"Our trade volume has considerably increased in the last four years. China is now Cote d'Ivoire's third largest trading partner," he added.

Ouattara hailed China's commitment to support Cote d'Ivoire's development, and urged the two sides to even "go further".

"Even though we are satisfied with this relationship, we believe we should go further. In our industrialization policy, we aim to increase value addition to Cote d'Ivoire's exports," he said.

According to the president, China constitutes a model in terms of economic transformation that could be emulated.

"We have a lot to learn from China's development model and expertise. In fact, the transformation of our economy will be accelerated if we can increase export of finished products to China," he said.

At the FOCAC summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced ten major plans for cooperation with Africa in the next three years, backed by 60 billion U.S. dollars of funds including interest free loans and preferential loans.

"We must use this platform (FOCAC summit) to implement the major priority areas for cooperation between China and Africa," Ouattara said. Enditem