China Africa Portal

China has won accolades as the most popular partner of developing countries. This came its way from the Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete at the G20 summit. China has certainly been playing an active role in the global economic arena, trying to tone down the impact of the economic crisis by promising aid, increasing trade relations with developing countries particularly those in the African continent. It has written off bad debts and is using its surplus currency reserves to invest in developmental projects in Africa, thereby generating employment and entering sectors that the western nations walked out of, due to the crisis.

Continue reading China’s Role in Africa as a Global Economic Leader

The world economy is being reshaped by new technologies, services, and trading relationships. Much of this dynamism is fuelled by ambitious developing-world nation-states like Brazil, India and South Africa. As governments, businesses and regional blocs in the global south expand their horizons, they increasingly bypass rich northern states. But is this “south-south cooperation” any more [...]

JOHANNESBURG, March 16 (Xinhua) — In what it called “a major step for Sino-African co-operation”, the China-Africa Development Fund (CADFund) opened its first representative office in Africa in Johannesburg on Monday.
    ”The fund will boost economic development in Africa by encouraging investment by Chinese enterprises,” it said in a statement.

Africa is a host of three Chinese cultural centers. The first overseas Chinese center was opened in Mauritius in 1988. Two other followed in Egypt and Benin. The Confucius Institute, which focuses on the promotion of the Chinese language and culture, is very present in the continent with 20 centers distributed around 13 countries.

China and Africa have a long history of trade relations, sometimes over third parties, dating back as far as 202 BC and AD 220. The first mention of Africa in Chinese sources was in the Yu-yang-tsa-tsu by Tuan Ch’eng-shih (died 863), a compendium of general knowledge where he wrote about the land of Po-pa-li (refering to Somalia).

Agriculture is a priority in China-Africa economic and technological cooperation.China has sighed agreements on agricultural and fishery cooperation with many African countries and has developed extensive and fruitful cooperation in this respect.
Since the 1960,China has helped over 40 African countries to build agro technology pilot or demonstration farms and promotion stations under nearly 200 cooperation [...]

Introduction

As global demand for energy continues to rise, major players like the United States, European Union (EU), and Japan are facing a new competitor in the race to secure long-term energy supplies: China. As its economy booms, China is intent on getting the resources needed to sustain its rapid growth, and is taking its quest [...]

Amid growing concerns about the People’s Repub lic of China’s burgeoning influence around the globe, Beijing has now set its sights on Africa. China’s inter est in Africa is not new. In the 1960s and 1970s, Beijing’s interest centered on building ideological sol idarity with other underdeveloped nations to advance Chinese-style communism and on repelling Western “imperialism.” Following the Cold War, Chinese interests evolved into more pragmatic pursuits such as trade, investment, and energy.