Ramaphosa said African countries are warming up to China ‘because we can see genuineness, respect and we see the intention to have a mutually beneficial relationship’.
‘ China has never been a colonial power’: Ramaphosa hits out at critics of China ’s rising footprint across Africa Published 6h agoBeijing - President Cyril Ramaphosa has rebuffed several negative narratives peddled against China increasing its footprint and unprecedented cooperation with countries across Africa .
“Our experience is that China seeks to promote a mutually beneficial relationship with countries that it interacts with or engages with on the continent. Today, President Xi Jinping demonstrated that, where he said China is now going to upgrade the relationship that it has with a number of countries to a comprehensive strategic partnership. That has a lot of meaning politically, and I guess you can extrapolate from that, economic dealings as well.
“I don’t necessarily buy into the notion that when China invests, it is with an intention that in the end, those countries end up in a debt trap or in a debt crisis. During Covid-19, I had the opportunity to talk to President Xi Jinping about the debts that many African countries were carrying at the time, and we were advocating for debt cancellation, debt forgiveness and a standstill on the debt repayments.
China and Africa account for one-third of the world population, and Xi said without China-Africa modernisation, there will be no global modernisation. The Asian economic powerhouse also committed to assist in the development of the African Continental Free Trade Area, and deepen logistics and financial cooperation for the benefit of trans-regional development within Africa.
“We will encourage Chinese companies to invest in Africa’s pharmaceutical production, and continue to do what we can to help Africa with epidemic response. We support the development of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to strengthen public health capacity in all African countries,” said Xi.
On the ninth partnership action for green development, Xi said China is ready to launch 30 clean energy projects in Africa, put in place meteorological early warning systems, and carry out cooperation in disaster prevention, mitigation and relief as well as biodiversity conservation.
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