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The FOCAC has played a historic role in broadening and deepening China-Africa cooperation
The FOCAC mechanism has been born and 20 years later, it has emerged as a solid multilateral platform for international cooperation and a strategic pacesetter and consummate example of the construction of a community with shared future for humanity
By Charles Onunaiju Web Exclusive ·2020-10-29

The inaugural meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), referred to as the first ministerial conference, was held in Chinese capital Beijing on October 10, 2000. Nigeria, which had just ended decades of military rule, had a notable presence at the conference and its delegation was led by the then foreign minister Alhaji Sule Lamido. The convocation of the conference of the FOCAC was a historical watershed because it was the consummation of a long-standing call for a definitive institutional framework for coherent, practical and enduring mechanism for South-South cooperation. Since its founding 20 years ago, the FOCAC mechanism has clearly delivered tangible and practical outcomes, but more importantly, has become a veritable multilateral framework for dialogue, consultation and coordination on issues of China-Africa cooperation.  

So far, three summits and seven ministerial conferences have been held. The eighth conference will be held in Dakar, Senegal, next year. The FOCAC is in many ways very unique and different from other international and multilateral platforms.  

With no bureaucracy and physical secretariat, the FOCAC works through inter-governmental dialogue and consultation, through which important decisions made at summits and ministerial conferences are implemented. Such non-governmental engagements, such as think tank forums that bring together academic institutions, private sector collaboration and cultural exchanges, have become integrated into the fabric of the FOCAC process.  

Phenomenal achievements  

Among the critical achievements and milestones in the exceptionally crucial journey of the FOCAC mechanism in the past 20 years, some are clearly phenomenal and need to be outlined in any serious reflections on the FOCAC.  

Since the founding of the FOCAC in 2000, trade between China and African countries has grown more than 20 times, hitting $208.7 billion in 2019 from a meager $10 billion in 2000. Of special significance is the fact that China has been Africas leading trading partner for the past eleven years in a row.  

Chinas stock of direct investment in Africa has reached $110 billion, with nearly 4,000 Chinese enterprises setting up plants and businesses across Africa.  

Along with China-built and invested mega projects like Kenyas standard gauge railway, Ethiopia-Djibouti electrified railway, Benguela railway project in Angola and Nigerias Abuja-Kaduna railway, Chinese companies have renovated and built over 6,000 km of railways and roads respectively in Africa. Additionally, under the FOCAC framework, China has constructed 20 ports and over 80 large-scale power plant facilities across Africa.  

In an executive summary of an extensive field research report titled Dance of the Lions and Dragons: How Are Africa and China Engaging and How Will the Partnership Evolve? published in 2017, U.S-based consultancy Mckinsey & Company wrote that we evaluated Africas economic partnership with the rest of the world across five dimensions: trade, investment stock, investment growth, infrastructure financing and aid. China is in the top four partners for Africa in these entire dimensions. No other country matches this depth and breadth of engagement.  

At the more than 1, 000 Chinese companies the field researchers of Mckinsey talked to, 89 percent of employees were African, adding up to more than 300,000 jobs for African workers. Scaled up across all the Chinese firms in Africa, these numbers suggest that Chinese-owned businesses already employ several million Africans.  

In the conclusion, the Mckinsey report said, Chinese firms are ... impacting the lives of millions of workers and hundreds of millions of consumers in almost every corner of the continent. In short, China-Africa economic relationship is here to stay, adding that a better and brighter future for the continent will need to involve Chinese partnership and participation.  

It is no gainsaying that the momentum of China-Africa cooperation in the recent decades was no mere happenstance. It has been largely driven by institutional mechanism of the FOCAC process, thereby strongly underlining the indispensable role the FOCAC can play both in the current momentum of the relationship and in the trajectories of its future.  

It is, however, important to note that the focused energy of the Belt and Road framework of international cooperation, a China-initiated broad network spanning overland, maritime and digital infrastructure connectivity, would add tremendous vitality to the China-Africa cooperation while synergizing with the FOCAC process.  

For sure, the China-Africa relationship is not just 20 years old. The bilateral cooperation between African countries and China dates back to 1956 when Egypt became the first African country to establish diplomatic relations with the Peoples Republic of China, followed by Guinea in 1959. Other countries like Mali and Ghana followed in early 1960s and Nigeria established diplomatic relations with China in February 1971.  

Tangible outcomes  

A major milestone in China-Africa cooperation of that era was the design, construction and completion of China-built railway between Zambias copper mines of Mposhi and Dar Es Salaam port in Tanzania, spanning more than 1,000 km. Until then, Zambia could only export its major income source, copper, through the Pretoria port in South Africa, which was under the racist minority regime.  

But Zambia was also a base of many liberation fighters in southern Africa. So, it had the option of expelling the fighters in order to access the Pretoria port or seeking an alternative port to export copper, which would then require building a railway. Neither Zambia nor Tanzania could afford to construct the railway. Leaders from both countries went around the world, asking for financial investment to support the construction of the railway. However, every major country and institution approached concluded that the project was not economically viable. It was only China, herself reeling from economic meltdown in the wake of the devastation of the cultural revolution, agreed to finance the project due to its strategic significance in accelerating the collapse of colonial domination and also as a spring board for economic self-reliance. The project was completed in five years, opening a key economic corridor in the region.  

What the FOCAC process did from its start in 2000 was to provide the long-standing China-Africa cooperation an institutional coherence and a platform to explore, more broadly and deeply, opportunities for cooperation and convert them into tangible and practical outcomes, impacting and improving the quality of lives of the people of Africa.  

No doubt, the FOCAC process is not Eldorado or an end in itself but a work in progress, consistently opening new vistas in exploring the opportunities of China-Africa Cooperation.  

It may not be well known that, though the initiative to hold the first ministerial conference in Beijing was executed by China, the idea of a multilateral platform to institutionalize China-Africa Cooperation in a coherent and structural form was essentially African.  

As veteran Chinese diplomat Liu Guijin, a former director of the African department of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs who served as Chinas first special representative to Africa, wrote in an article in the Journal of China-Africa studies, It could be said that China proposed and initiated the FOCAC, but the Africans were the first to put forward the idea.  

According to him, In May 1999, the foreign minister of Madagascar said during his visit to China that, since there were the commonwealth heads of government meetings between Africa and the UK, the Franco-Africa Summit between Africa and France and Tokyo International Conference on Africa Development between Africa and Japan, it was natural for Africa and China to have a forum with similar functions as well. Liu wrote that the then Chinese foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan, brought the idea to the forefront and requested the ministrys department of Africa Affairs to have in-depth discussions on the proposal. The rest is history, to use a popular saying.  

The FOCAC mechanism was born and 20 years later, it has emerged as a solid multilateral platform for international cooperation and a strategic pacesetter and consummate example of the construction of a community with shared future for humanity.  

The writer is director of the Center for China Studies, Abuja, and a member of the international advisory committee of the China-Africa Institute in Beijing 

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