China envoys deliver Xi's invite to African leaders for September FOCAC summit

Chinese diplomats are delivering invitation letters to leaders across Africa for the next key diplomatic event between Beijing and the continent, which will take place in September against a backdrop of economic uncertainty.

In a departure from tradition - which dictates that details of major summits are released a few weeks or days in advance - Uganda's foreign ministry said the ninth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) will open in Beijing on September 3.

According to the ministry, the Chinese ambassador to Uganda Zhang Lizhong handed over a formal invitation from President Xi Jinping to his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni at a meeting last week with Foreign Minister Odongo Jeje Abubakher.

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The summit, from September 3-8, will include four simultaneous high-level meetings on different themes as well as a business forum, according to a statement about the meeting from the Ugandan ministry.

Libya, Burundi, the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have also made public their invitations, which were delivered to officials in the latter two countries by Liu Yuxi, China's special representative on African Affairs.

FOCAC, held every three years, is China and Africa's most important engagement mechanism and where Beijing has traditionally made huge financial pledges to fund major infrastructure projects such as ports, railways, power dams and highways.

At the last FOCAC in 2021 - held virtually in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic - Xi pledged a billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines to Africa. Financial promises were lower than in previous forums, at US$40 billion, compared to around US$60 billion in 2015 and 2018.

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech via video link at the opening ceremony of the ministerial conference of the 2021 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2021 (FOCAC), which was held virtually because of the pandemic. Photo: Xinhua alt=Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech via video link at the opening ceremony of the ministerial conference of the 2021 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2021 (FOCAC), which was held virtually because of the pandemic. Photo: Xinhua>

While Chinese investments might be lower again this year, they are expected to focus on agriculture, industrialisation and adding processing capacity to the continent's vast minerals extraction sector, observers said.

This would be in line with initiatives that Xi unveiled last year - during the China-Africa leaders' dialogue on the sidelines of the Brics summit in South Africa - for the continent's industrialisation, agricultural modernisation, and talent development.

Hannah Ryder, chief executive of Beijing-based consultancy Development Reimagined, said this year's forum would be different from the summit in 2018 - the year the US-China trade war began and before the economic ravages of Covid-19.

The intervening years have seen defaults by some African countries - with Zambia, Ethiopia and Ghana among those seeking debt relief from their major creditors - as well as a property crisis and weak business and consumer confidence in China.

"Fast-forward to today, and the summit comes during a very different world, but also after a slump in financing and people-to-people engagement with Africa due to Covid-19," she said.

According to Ryder, who organised a retreat in April for African diplomats in Beijing to discuss and build consensus on the agenda for FOCAC, "it's only been trade that has really stayed stable and in some cases grown".

Two-way trade between Africa and China reached US$282 billion last year, an increase from US$185.29 billion in 2018 and US$231.88 billion in 2021.

Key ideas that African governments could propose for new commitments during FOCAC included more value-added Chinese investment, more exports to China, and support for financial architecture reform, Ryder said.

The latter could include scaled-up contributions to African institutions, such as special drawing rights to the African Development Bank, she said.

According to Ryder, African leaders want support for renewable power generation projects and associated localised manufacturing of environmental goods, as well as support for Africa's global governance reform agenda.

The message from African governments to China would be to "continue to scale up engagement with Africa, and localise, localise, localise", she said.

"Invest in localising manufacturing of everything from food to medicine, invest in local African talent, invest in local African institutions, and invest in localising the African agency internationally."

Yun Sun, co-director of the East Asia Programme and director of the Washington-based Stimson Centre's China programme, said there would be a lot of attention on how China positioned itself on Africa and what its new economic priorities would be.

According to Sun, there will also be interest in Africa about how China plans to deal with the political volatility that some countries on the continent are facing.

"In the past, people were focused on what China's financial commitment to Africa looks like as announced at FOCAC. I doubt it will remain China's priority, given how much China's approach to Africa has evolved," he said.

High-yield hybrid rice produced with Chinese technologies in a demonstration field in Madagascar. Photo: Xinhua alt=High-yield hybrid rice produced with Chinese technologies in a demonstration field in Madagascar. Photo: Xinhua>

Lauren Johnston, associate professor at the University of Sydney's China Studies Centre, said she expected agriculture to feature prominently during the FOCAC talks, especially on raising productivity, with both sides eyeing growing African trade and investment numbers, and on realising food security.

Johnston said China could also make announcements on talent development through providing scholarships, funding technical and vocational education training, as well as investing in more education and training colleges in Africa.

According to Johnston, another recurring topic in recent years has been yuan internationalisation as a way for China and its allies to reduce the excessive need to accumulate US dollars for settling trade payments.

"China has been the continent's largest trade partner for more than a decade, yet African currencies and the [yuan] are secondary to that exchange," she said.

"Finding ways to internationalise the [yuan] in ways that also support both the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) agenda and the African Continental Free Trade Agreement roll-out may be in focus too."

Zhou Yuyuan, deputy director at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies' Centre for West Asian and African Studies, said development financing cooperation would remain an important area, and would be expected by all parties.

China and Africa may continue to strengthen cooperation in traditional areas such as infrastructure and energy, as well as information and communications, he said.

"One possible direction is that China and Africa will continue to strengthen consultations on trade and investment issues, support African countries in developing local industrial chains, and increase the added value of export goods."

According to Zhou, China-Africa cooperation is "undergoing a stage of transformation from field expansion to deepening cooperation", with the summit likely to propose trade aid measures, cooperative trade policies and free trade agreements, along with support for Africa to expand its exports to China.

On international affairs, Zhou said China and Africa would express a common position on major issues and strengthen coordination of positions on issues such as the reform of the UN Security Council and global financial institutions.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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