The new frontier in China-Africa cooperation: blogger

For African countries to take full advantage of their increasing engagement with China they need to gradually move away from excessive reliance on processing few raw commodities and toward greater production of labour-intensive light manufactured goods and services for export to China. This engagement could also help new start-ups become more efficient by exposing them to competition and advancement in technology.

As observed by most researchers this could lead to greater integration of African countries not only with other regions of the world but, perhaps most important, on the continent itself, where most domestic markets are too small and too shallow to compete with the large-scale production of internationally recognised brands.

With Xi's ongoing visit to Africa (Zimbabwe and South Africa) this week, many of the continent's private businesses will be hoping for stronger and increased cooperation with the private sector in China and that requires China eliminating policies that do not encourage import of competitive high-value added goods and services from Africa.

High on Xi's agenda is the two-day Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Johannesburg South Africa. The forum, since its inception with the Ministerial Conference and first Summit in Beijing in 2000 and 2006 respectively is by far the largest gathering of policymakers in Africa and China to meet and discuss policies that foster increased partnership and cooperation of China with the continent. This is the forum that puts China's highly promoted partnership with Africa to the litmus test.

Dominating the agenda will be partnerships in infrastructural development, new energy and electricity to meet the growing demand by industries in Africa and a new cause for concern – terrorism - if China is to sustain its increasing engagement in the region.

Xi has said China and Africa share a common dream and destiny hence the reason for China's relentless efforts at rejuvenating the economies of countries on the continent through fair partnership agreements. Areas of cooperation are numerous and exceed the Western rhetoric of China's focus on investment in the extractive industries. There is increasing cooperation in areas including people-to-people exchanges, education, transportation, health, security, agriculture, telecommunication, finance and more importantly technology transfer to catapult African countries into the next phase of industrialisation.

African countries are now increasingly relying on China to become less a supplier of raw materials but manufacturers of processed goods. These are the sort of partnerships, particularly in fair trade agreements and technology transfer, which Africa lacked during decades of heavy reliance on the West. As African countries look further east it is hoped that China's economic transformation would remain a model for peer review among economies in the region.

The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and don't represent views of China Daily website.

The author is a senior blogger of the China Daily website.