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African nations urged to maximize on China-Africa cooperation: economist

Xinhua, December 10, 2015 Adjust font size:

African nations should maximize on China-Africa Cooperation to accelerate their own development, a Senior Economist said on Wednesday.

Frans Uusiku, a Senior Economist at Simonis Storms Securities said that as a first, African nations should leverage on investment in education and innovation so that the region can become globally competitive in terms of production and trade. "Secondly, transport challenges in terms of infrastructure and logistics in Africa should form part the China-Africa agenda and cooperation framework," he said.

Uusiku said that China's commitment of 60 billion U.S. dollars and plans to roll out 10 major China-Africa cooperation in the coming three years will have a great impact on Africa.

"Development cooperation of this nature would enhance Africa's capacity to produce and trade with China, and thereby improve their economic growth, said Uusiku.

"While the above is true, these developments come with opportunity costs in terms of the extent to which African states can trade with each other," he said on Wednesday.

According to the Senior Economist, currently, Africa intra-trade is around 10 percent."This effectively imply that African economies trade more with the rest of the world than with themselves. Therefore, current policy aspirations of the African Union is to improve this situation by promoting regional value chain. Against this backdrop," Uusiku said.

"There are currently numerous challenges prohibiting African states from trading with each other such as poor transport and logistic infrastructures as well as the lack of modern custom systems that would facilitate trade," he added.

It is therefore critical for China and African states to use platforms such as the FOCAC to hush out economic, trade and political issues, stressed Uusiku."I view this as an important avenue within which China and African states would negotiate development and investment frameworks that would ultimately inform the development of economic and foreign policy of individual states," he added. Endit