06/04/2020
- Official news agency Xinhua says the three died in Saturday’s attack in the province of Ituri
- Central African country is major source of cobalt and copper but armed rebels pose a persistent risk
Mines have been targeted by armed rebels in the past. Photo: Reuters
A gun attack in a mining area in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has killed three Chinese nationals, the official news agency Xinhua reported on Monday.
The attack took place on Saturday in the northeastern province of Ituri, which borders Uganda and South Sudan, Xinhua said, citing the Chinese embassy.
It did not name the mine in question or the company operating it.
The DRC is the world’s biggest producer of mined cobalt – a key ingredient in batteries for electric vehicles – and one of Africa’s biggest copper producers, although its key copper-cobalt producing region is in the southwest, far from the site of the attack.
The country has attracted billions of dollars in investment from Chinese miners in recent years despite security risks.
Congo sends in troops to guard Chinese-owned copper mine amid fears of human rights abuses
Canadian gold miner Banro, which owns mines in Maniema, a DRC province south of Ituri, suspended operations last year after several of its mines were overrun by armed rebels.
The Chinese embassy has asked the Congolese government to “take effective measures to protect the lives and property of Chinese citizens” in the DRC, as well as to expedite an investigation into the killings, Xinhua said, noting that the embassy had repeatedly advised Chinese citizens against travel to Ituri due to the presence of armed groups.
The embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, a public holiday in China.
Source: SCMP
Posted in armed rebels, attack, Banro, batteries, Canadian gold miner, Chinese embassy, Chinese miners, Chinese nationals, cobalt, Congolese government, copper, copper-cobalt producing region, Democratic Republic of Congo, electric vehicles, human rights abuses, Ituri, killed, Maniema, mine, South Sudan, Uganda, Uncategorized, Xinhua |
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24/02/2020
- An insect-killing fungus has been turned into a mass-produced biopesticide that will face its biggest challenge in East Africa
- Current swarm has put 13m people at risk of famine and this will be the first large-scale test of its effectiveness
Young locusts in Somalia, where the fungus will be used to try to kill them. Photo: AP
Chinese factories are producing thousands of tonnes of a “green zombie fungus” to help fight the swarms of locusts in East Africa.
Metarhizium is a genus of fungi with nearly 50 species – some genetically modified – that is used as a biological insecticide because its roots drill through the insects’ hard exoskeleton and gradually poisons them.
In China it was named lu jiang jun, which means green zombie fungus, because it gradually turns its victims in a green mossy lump.
There are now dozens of factories across the country dedicated to producing its spores and despite the curbs introduced to stop the spread of Covid-19, many of them have resumed operations and are shipping thousands of tonnes to Africa.
Plague fears as massive East Africa locust outbreak spreads
These factories are set up in a similar way to breweries, growing the spores on rice which is kept in carefully controlled conditions to ensure the correct temperature and humidity.
Each plant can produce thousands of tonnes of fungi powder per year, each gram of which contains tens of billions of spores.
“I am sending off a truckload right now. Our stock is running out,” said the marketing manager of a production plant in Jiangxi province. “Some customers need it urgently. They need it to kill the locusts.”
The need is particularly pressing in East Africa at the moment, where abnormally high levels of rainfall during the dry season allowed hundreds of billions of locusts to hatch in recent months.
So far the swarms have devastated crops in countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda and are moving on to neighbouring countries.
Up to 13 million people face the risk of famine in East Africa. Photo: AFP
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned the situation could be the “worst in decades” and the resulting famine may affect 13 million people and cause international food prices to soar.
Last week, Science magazine reported that the Somalian government, working with the FAO, was preparing to a metarhizium species that only kills locusts and grasshoppers in what it described as the largest ever use of biopesticides against the insects.
Scientists do not believe that the fungus will be enough to solve the problem – monitoring the outbreak and targeting their breeding grounds will be more important in the long-run – but if it proves effective it could be an important weapon to target future outbreaks.
It will take time to gauge the effectiveness, partly because each fungus will take several days to take effect and partly because of the sheer scale of the challenge; a single swarm in Kenya was estimated to contain between 100 billion and 200 billion locusts.
By fair means or fowl: how Chinese herdsmen are planning to stop a locust invasion
The locusts have also swept eastward into the Middle East, travelling up to 150km (90 miles) a day, and are moving closer to China now that they have now reached some of its neighbours, including India and Pakistan.
At present China’s agriculture ministry believes some locusts may follow the monsoon into the country but “the chances of them causing damage is very small”.
Most scientists agree the swarms will not have lasting effect on food production but say developing countries can tap into China’s cutting-edge anti-locust technology.
Radar stations have been set up all the way along China’s western and southern borders to detect possible clouds of locusts, while unmanned devices lure the insects into traps to collect data about their species population and size.
A locust being eaten inside out by the metarhizium fungi. Photo: Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Maryland
The data is streamed to the ministry’s programme command, which is responsible for the planning and coordination of the national efforts to prevent an outbreak.
The scientists also said that planes loaded with biological and chemical sprays were standing by.
Today, most locust outbreaks happen in developing countries that do not have advanced monitoring networks and some of them are unable to produce pesticides on a mass scale, according to Li Hu, an associate professor with the China Agricultural University in Beijing.
The Chinese locust treatment technologies were highly advanced, and usually cheaper than competing solutions from the West, he said.
Chinese researchers are now working with colleagues in other countries to help them solve the problem.
One disadvantage of the Chinese research is that it is mostly focused on local species, or the East Asia migratory locust. The desert locusts currently swarming East Africa have different genes and behaviour, and Li warned that some methods that work in China might not work elsewhere.
A giant indoor farm in China is breeding 6 billion cockroaches a year. Here’s why
There were some sightings of the species reported in Yunnan and Tibet in the past, but they did not build up to large colonies, Professor Kang Le, lead scientist of the locust research programme with the Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, told China Science Daily last week.
The vast west China region of Xinjiang, which shares a border with eight countries, is currently too cold for a locust migration, but once temperatures start to rise in the spring it could see locusts swarming across the border with Afghanistan.
Shi Wangpeng, a senior government locust expert, told China Business Network on Sunday that China should be on high alert because many Afghan farms had already been affected.
“These areas share a long border with us, there are almost no barriers,” he was quoted as saying by the Shanghai-based magazine.
China has a long and bitter history of locust swarms, with more than 840 being recorded in the official records over the past 2,700 years.
One famine, in the year 628 was so devastating that even the Tang dynasty emperor Taizong was reported to have run short of food and resorted to eating the insects to survive.
China has a long and bitter history of locust swarms. Photo: AFP
This, in turn, means that China’s rulers have long been looking for innovative ways to solve the problem
In the past farmers tried remedies such as building huge fires, burying the insects in ditches or trying to kill them with sticks.
In one campaign organised by prime minister Yao Chong in 715, the farms collected 9 million sacks of dead locusts and managed to save a significant proportion of their crops, according to historic text.
In more recent times more sophisticated technologies have been deployed to tackle the menace.
Some researchers have spent decades chasing locust colonies and studying their individual and collective behaviour everywhere from coastal areas to inland deserts, and in 2014 Chinese scientists released the world’s most comprehensive genetic map of locusts.
Researchers have also developed chemical agents that can disorient swarms of locusts and disperse them.
Chinese scientists first became interested in the green zombie’s potential in the 1980s after discovering that South Pacific islanders had been using them to kill insects on coconut trees.
Research by US scientists confirmed its effectiveness in the 1990s and the Chinese started importing the fungus from the United States and Britain.
Their experiments led to the development of newer and deadlier strains and mass production started in the past decade.
Other fungi or bacteria can be used to fight locusts, and some laboratories are working with agricultural technology companies to modify their genes to turn them into more deadly or precise killers.
One genetically engineered species of microsporidia, another type of insect-killing fungus, for instance, can generate three times as many as the spores to those produced by nature species, according to a document from the China Association of Agricultural Science Societies last year.
While it remains to be seen whether the current swarms will reach China, these treatments have been effective in the past and there has not been a locust outbreak in China for a decade.
Source: SCMP
Posted in Afghan farms, Afghanistan, Agriculture ministry, Beijing, Britain, China Agricultural University, China Association of Agricultural Science Societies, China Business Network, China Science Daily, China’s, Chinese Academy of Sciences, cockroaches, coconut trees, desert locusts, different genes and behaviour, East Africa’s, East Asia migratory locust, Ethiopia, famine, fighting, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), green zombie fungus, hold ke, hold key, India, insect-killing fungus, Institute of Zoology, Jiangxi Province, Kenya, locust treatment technologies, locusts, mass-produced biopesticide, microsporidia, Middle East, monsoon, Pakistan, Plague fears, Radar stations, Science, Somalia, South Pacific islanders, swarms, Taizong, Tang dynasty emperor, Tibet, Uganda, Uncategorized, United States, Xinjiang, Yunnan |
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19/02/2020
- Forty countries will be able to diagnose the disease, and the Africa CDC is training health workers
- Until two weeks ago, there were only two laboratories on the continent that could test for the virus, in Senegal and South Africa
A scientist researches the coronavirus at the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, Senegal, which until two weeks ago was one of just two labs in Africa that could test for the disease. Photo: AFP
Forty countries in Africa will be able to test for the
deadly new coronavirus
by the end of the week, the WHO said, after Egypt confirmed the first case on the continent last week.
The World Health Organisation said many of those nations had been sending samples elsewhere for testing and waiting several days for results.
“Now they can do it themselves, within 24 to 48 hours,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a media briefing on Tuesday.
Until about two weeks ago, there were only two laboratories in the continent of 54 countries – in Senegal and South Africa – with the reagents needed to test for the virus. That meant dozens of nations that had quarantined suspected patients were sending samples to South Africa or Senegal to be tested.
The WHO earlier this week sent reagent kits for coronavirus diagnosis to more than 20 countries in Africa to step up diagnosis of the virus, which causes a disease now known as Covid-19. The global health body said more countries in Africa were expected to receive testing kits this week.
In addition, the WHO last week sent testing kits to Cameroon, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia.
Coronavirus: WHO urges caution over study showing ‘decline’ in new Covid-19 cases in China
Tedros said some countries in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, were using systems developed to test for the deadly Ebola virus to now test for the coronavirus.
“This is a great example of how investing in health systems can pay dividends for health security,” Tedros said.
Several countries, including Ethiopia and South Sudan, were prioritising surveillance and monitoring at ports of entry, he said. “We’re also working with partners in some of the most fragile contexts, from Syria to the Central African Republic, to prepare countries for the arrival of the virus,” he said.
The WHO and Egyptian health officials on Friday confirmed that a 33-year-old foreigner had tested positive for the coronavirus. Egypt’s health ministry said the patient had tested positive for the virus without any symptoms, raising concern that there could be undetected cases on the continent, as countries scramble to equip labs to test for the disease.
The asymptomatic patient in Egypt was identified through contact screening of an index case who travelled to Cairo on a business trip from January 21 to February 4 and tested positive for the virus on February 11 in China, the WHO regional office said.
The new virus strain has killed more than 2,000 people and infected over 74,000 since the outbreak began in central China in December. It has spread to more than 20 countries.
Screening measures have been stepped up across Africa, including quarantining all passengers arriving from Chinese cities, amid fears that poorer countries with weaker health systems may struggle to cope if the virus spreads on the continent. More than a dozen countries still do not have the capacity to test for the pneumonia-like illness.
There are concerns that Africa’s close links with China put it at high risk for the spread of the new virus. Africa has become home to millions of Chinese since Beijing started looking to the continent for raw materials for its industries and markets for its products. China has been Africa’s largest trading partner since 2009, after it overtook the United States, with two-way trade standing at US$108 billion last year, according to China’s commerce ministry.
Africa CDC director John Nkengasong said it had been “investing in preparedness and response to the disease”. Photo: Reuters
John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said it was working closely with the WHO and other partners to ensure that Egypt had the diagnostic tools it needed, and that the right actions were taken to contain the spread of the virus.
“We anticipated that the Covid-19 outbreak would inevitably impact Africa. That is why the Africa CDC has been working actively with African Union member states and partners in the past four weeks and investing in preparedness and response to the disease,” he said.
“[Last week in Dakar, Senegal] we conducted training and supplied test kits to 16 African laboratories, including from Egypt. Egypt also received additional test kits from the WHO,” Nkengasong said.
The Africa CDC would train 40 health workers from nine countries, including Egypt, in Nairobi this week, he said, on “enhancing detection and investigation of Covid-19 at points of entry”.
The Chinese medical workers on the front line of the coronavirus fight in Wuhan
On Monday, Ethiopia, home to one of the continent’s busiest airports, said it had received equipment and reagents for virus detection and control. “We are working hard day and night with the government to improve the critical measures needed to ensure that the country is ready to effectively respond to an outbreak of Covid-19,” said Boureima Hama Sambo, the WHO representative in Ethiopia.
despite pressure for it to suspend services to the country. Many countries on the continent have restricted travel to and from mainland China, while six out of eight African airlines with Chinese routes have halted flights until the virus is contained, including EgyptAir.
Egypt has suspended all flights to and from the mainland until the end of the month and has evacuated more than 300 Egyptians from Wuhan, the epicentre of the epidemic.
Source: SCMP
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20/12/2019
- President Yoweri Museveni tells Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi trade between African nations is unsustainable
- China is the continent’s largest trading partner and lender, but imports mostly its oil and minerals
Africa has a surplus of agricultural products, Uganda’s leader says. Photo: Shutterstock
African countries want China to open up its markets to the continent’s agricultural products, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni told top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi after Beijing
vowed to boost agricultural trade with the United States.
In a meeting with Yang in Uganda, Museveni said an increasing number of African
countries wanted to sell to the lucrative Chinese market.
He said Africa had a surplus of agricultural products despite exporting to Europe and the US, partly because trade between African countries remained low.
“Africa’s 54 countries have come together through market integration in blocs such as Comesa [Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa] that are not sustainable,” Museveni said. “The surplus of production needs another intercontinental market and an external market like China to come in.”
China is Africa’s largest trading partner, having surpassed the US in 2009. Africa’s trade with China was worth US$204 billion last year, according to figures from China’s Ministry of Commerce.
China is also the continent’s largest lender, having advanced more than US$143 billion between 2000 and 2017 to African countries for building motorways, power dams and railways, according to figures from the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
Museveni said China was interested in importing some aquatic products from Uganda, such as the Nile perch fish, which he said had high demand globally.
China pledges another US$60b to Africa as leaders meet in Beijing
4 Sep 2018
With China exporting far more to the continent than it imports from it, African nations are aiming to restructure the trading relationship to narrow their trade deficit by working out what Chinese consumers want and how to get it to them.
China’s imports of African goods are dominated by natural resources such as crude oil, copper, cobalt, iron ore, diamonds, gold and titanium, which it buys to meet its industrial and manufacturing needs. In return, Africa imports machinery, electronics and manufactured consumer goods.
The call from Museveni came after China and the US reached an
interim deal to resolve aspects of their protracted trade war. US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has said that, under the deal, China had agreed to buy US$80 billion in American agricultural products over two years.
China has not confirmed the figure, but the deal is being
watched closely by China’s other trading partners. Since the dispute with the US began in July last year, Beijing has diversified its agricultural product suppliers to include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Germany, New Zealand and Spain.
China’s agricultural trade with Africa increased from US$650 million in 2000 to US$6.92 billion in 2018, Chinese Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu said this month. Han said he hoped that the figure would reach US$10 billion in the next decade.
Museveni said in the meeting with Yang that Beijing had “supported the continent’s prosperity through trade”, and that the memorandum of understanding he had signed last year with Chinese President Xi Jinping had “intensified the relationship” between their countries. A pipeline being constructed to Tanzania, to connect Uganda’s oil fields to the Indian Ocean, is being funded partly by Chinese investment, along with new industrial parks.
Yang said China would work with Uganda to implement the agreements reached by their respective heads of state and the outcomes of the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.
Beijing set to pledge further billions to Africa despite lending fears 2 Sep 2018
He said China would help Uganda to grow its economy, increase trade between the two countries, and build industrial parks and infrastructure. Beijing would continue to fund projects through the
Belt and Road Initiative, its transcontinental infrastructure investment strategy, and through Uganda’s development plan Uganda Vision 2040, without providing details.
After Uganda, Yang will continue his African tour by visiting Congo-Brazzaville. The tiny oil-dependent central African nation recently fell into debt distress when global oil prices dropped, forcing Beijing to restructure its loans to unlock a bailout by the International Monetary Fund.
Xi denies China is spending money on African ‘vanity projects’
Yang will then visit the West African nation of Senegal, where Beijing is funding large infrastructure projects.
Several other leading Chinese diplomats have made trips to Africa this year, including Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who visited South Africa in October. Last week, Ji Bingxuan, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress – the permanent body of China’s legislature – led a group of officials visiting Congo-Brazzaville.
Source: SCMP
Posted in African, agricultural products, asks, buy, China alert, cut, trade deficit, Uganda, Uncategorized |
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18/08/2019
- Beijing will be watching as leaders of African nations and international organisations gather for development summit in Yokohama later this month
- Tokyo is expected to use the conference to articulate how its approach to aid and infrastructure is different from Chinese projects
The Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway, funded by China, opened in 2017. Japan has criticised Chinese lending practices in Africa. Photo: Xinhua
The long rivalry between China and Japan is again playing out in Africa, with Tokyo planning to pour more aid into the continent and invest in infrastructure projects there.
Beijing – which has for decades funnelled money into the continent – will be watching as the leaders of 54 African countries and international organisations descend on Yokohama later this month for the seventh Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD).
Japan reportedly plans to pledge more than 300 billion yen (US$2.83 billion) in aid to Africa during the conference. While that might not be enough to alarm China – which in recent years has been on a spending spree in the continent – it will be paying close attention.
Japan has in the past used the meetings to criticise Chinese lending practices in Africa, saying it was worried about the “unrealistic” level of debt incurred by African countries – concerns that China has dismissed.
This year, analysts expect Tokyo will use the conference to articulate how its approach to African development is substantively different from that of the Chinese.
“So, look for the words ‘quality’, ‘transparency’ and ‘sustainability’ to be used a lot throughout the event,” said Eric Olander, managing editor of the non-partisan China Africa Project.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono gives a speech at the TICAD in Tokyo in October. Japan will reportedly pledge US$2.83 billion in aid to Africa this year. Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun
Olander said Japan often sought to position its aid and development programmes as an alternative to China’s by emphasising more transparency in loan deals, higher-quality infrastructure projects and avoiding saddling countries with too much debt.
“In some ways, the Japanese position is very similar to that of the US where they express many of the same criticisms of China’s engagement strategy in Africa,” Olander said.
But the rivalry between China and Japan had little to do with Africa, according to Seifudein Adem, a professor at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.
“It is a spillover effect of their contest for supremacy in East Asia,” said Adem, who is from Ethiopia.
“Japan’s trade with Africa, compared to China’s trade with Africa, is not only relatively small but it is even shrinking. It is a result of the acceleration of China’s engagement with Africa.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping attends a group photo session with African leaders during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing last year. Photo: AP
Japan launched the TICAD in 1993, to revive interest in the continent and find raw materials for its industries and markets for products. About a decade later, China began holding a rival event, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.
It is at heart an ideological rivalry unfolding on the continent, according to Martin Rupiya, head of innovation and training at the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes in Durban, South Africa.
“China cast Japan as its former colonial interloper – and not necessarily master – until about 1949. Thereafter, China’s Mao [Zedong] developed close relations, mostly liberation linkages with several African nationalist movements,” Rupiya said.
Beijing had continued to invoke those traditional and historical ties, which Japan did not have, he said.
“Furthermore, Japan does not command the type of resources – call it largesse – that China has and occasionally makes available to Africa,” Rupiya said.
Although both Asian giants have made inroads in Africa, the scale is vastly different.
While Japan turned inward as it sought to rebuild its struggling economy amid a slowdown, China was ramping up trade with African countries at a time of rapid growth on the continent.
That saw trade between China and Africa growing twentyfold in the last two decades. The value of their trade reached US$204.2 billion last year, up 20 per cent from 2017, according to Chinese customs data. Exports from Africa to China stood at US$99 billion last year, the highest level since the 1990s. Meanwhile, through its Belt and Road Initiative that aims to revive the Silk Road to connect Asia with Europe and Africa, China is funding and building Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway and the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway. Beijing is also building major infrastructure projects in Zambia, Angola and Nigeria.
Japan’s trade with Africa is just a small fraction of Africa’s trade with China. In 2017, Japan’s exports to the continent totalled US$7.8 billion, while imports were US$8.7 billion, according to trade data compiled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
How speaking with one voice could help Africa get a better deal from China
But Japan now appears eager to get back in the game and expand its presence in Africa, and analysts say this year’s TICAD will be critical – both in terms of the amount of money Tokyo commits to African development and how it positions itself as an alternative to the Chinese model.
Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi, a visiting professor at Pusan National University in South Korea, said the continent was “economically vital to Japan, both in trade and investments”.
“Moreover, Japan has established some strong links with African states through foreign aid,” Hinata-Yamaguchi said.
“Japan’s move is driven by both economic and political interests. Economically, Japan needs to secure and maintain its presence in, and linkages with, the African states while opening new markets and opportunities,” he said.
To counter China’s belt and road strategy, Japan has launched the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor project, an economic cooperation deal, with India and African countries.
Tokyo meanwhile pledged about US$30 billion in public-private development assistance to Africa over three years at the 2016 TICAD, in Nairobi. But China offered to double that amount last year, during its Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing.
Still, Japan continues to push forward infrastructure projects on the continent. It is building the Mombasa Port on the Kenyan coast, while Ngong Road, a major artery in Nairobi, is being converted into a dual carriageway with a grant from Tokyo.
Japan is also funding the construction of the Kampala Metropolitan transmission line, which draws power from Karuma dam in Uganda. In Tanzania, it provided funding for the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (Tazara) flyover. And through the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Tokyo also helps African countries improve their rice yields using Japanese technology.
There are nearly 1,000 Japanese companies – including carmakers like Nissan and Toyota – operating in Africa, but that is just one-tenth the number of Chinese businesses on the continent.
Are Chinese loans putting Africa on the debt-trap express?
Olander said Japan’s construction companies were among the best in the world, albeit not necessarily the cheapest, and that Tokyo was pushing its message about “high-quality” construction.
XN Iraki, an associate professor at the University of Nairobi School of Business, said Japan wanted to change its approach to Africa on trade, which had long been dominated by cars and electronics.
“[It has] no big deals like China’s Standard Gauge Railway. But after China’s entry with a bang – including teaching Mandarin through Confucius Institutes – Japan has realised its market was under threat and hence the importance of the TICAD, which should remind us that Japan is also there.”
Source: SCMP
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26/06/2019
Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, meets with South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor in Beijing, capital of China, June 25, 2019. (Xinhua/Zhang Ling)
BEIJING, June 25 (Xinhua) — China on Tuesday vowed to work with African countries to enhance cooperation based on equality and openness to build a community of shared future.
That came as Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi addressed the opening ceremony of the Coordinators’ Meeting on the Implementation of the Follow-up Actions of the Beijing Summit of the Forum on the China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).
After reading Chinese President Xi Jinping’s congratulatory letter to the meeting, Wang said the letter fully expressed Xi’s profound friendship toward African countries and their people, and demonstrated the Chinese government’s strong willingness to engage in friendly cooperation.
In delivering on the blueprint for China-Africa cooperation in the new era, China stands ready to work with the African side in implementing promises with concrete and effective actions, and achieving full implementation of consensus and outcomes concluded at the FOCAC Beijing Summit, Wang said.
Wang also called for sticking to the fundamental purpose of building a community of shared future and the development path of jointly constructing the Belt and Road, upholding multilateralism, and safeguarding the common interests of developing countries and emerging markets.
“Any disturbance will not affect our resolve to enhance cooperation, and any difficulty will not hinder our joint advancement in achieving rejuvenation,” he said.
After the opening ceremony, Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, met with four foreign ministers from African countries, including Nabeela Tunis from Sierra Leone, Simeon Oyono Esono Angue from Equatorial Guinea, Naledi Pandor from South Africa, and Amadou Ba from Senegal.
Also on Tuesday, Wang Yi met with foreign ministers from Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Uganda and Libya, and an official on economics from Eritrea.
Source: Xinhua
Posted in africa, China alert, China-Africa cooperation, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister, Cote d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Forum on the China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), Ghana, Lesotho, Libya, Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Uganda, Uncategorized, Wang Yi, Zimbabwe |
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26/06/2019
BEIJING, June 25 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping and visiting Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni agreed to lift their countries’ relationship to a comprehensive cooperative partnership on Tuesday.
At present, China-Uganda ties are at their best in history, as the political mutual trust has been continuously enhanced, pragmatic cooperation has yielded fruitful results, and the two sides maintain close collaboration in international and regional affairs, Xi said.
He said China was willing to work with Uganda to promote the ties in the process of the joint building of the Belt and Road and the implementation of the outcomes of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Beijing Summit.
Xi said China and Uganda should continue to understand and support each other on issues related to each other’s core interests and major concerns.
He said China is willing to strengthen exchanges with Uganda on the experience of governance, and deepen cooperation in areas such as infrastructure construction, trade, energy, agriculture, epidemic prevention and control, human resources, industrial parks and tourism.
“Chinese enterprises are encouraged to invest in Uganda in accordance with market-oriented principles,” Xi said.
The Chinese side appreciates the positive role played by Uganda in maintaining regional peace and stability and supports Uganda’s efforts to safeguard its own security, he said.
The Chinese president called on the two sides to jointly and clearly oppose protectionism and unilateralism, safeguard the international system and international order with the United Nations as the core, and commit themselves to building a new type of international relations and fostering a community with a shared future for mankind.
Uganda will take the establishment of the comprehensive cooperative partnership as an opportunity to deepen cooperation with China, Museveni said, expressing the willingness to learn from the Communist Party of China’s experience in state governance.
Museveni added that unilateralism was very dangerous, and that Uganda and China should strengthen communication and coordination in multilateral affairs such as those within the framework of the United Nations.
Source: Xinhua
Posted in China alert, China-Uganda ties, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Communist Party of China, cooperative partnership, Uganda, Ugandan President, Uncategorized, United Nations |
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 