SA to push for African development at FOCAC

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Pretoria - South Africa will use the upcoming Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit to advocate for the centrality of all African development partnerships.

“We will collectively seek to bring in key elements of African Union Agenda 2063 and its First Ten-Year Implementation Plan as Africa’s guiding vision for its development into the FOCAC Plan of Action,” Deputy Minister of International Relations and Co-operation, Luwellyn Landers, said on Tuesday.

He was delivering a lecture on deepening ties with SA’s continental peers and Brics partners (Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

The summit in Johannesburg will take place from December 4 - 5 and would be preceded by a meeting of senior officials on December 2. A sixth ministerial meeting of FOCAC would take place the following day.

The theme for Summit is “Africa-China Progressing Together: Win-Win Cooperation for Common Development”.

Deputy Minister Landers said this theme is designed to take into account the aspirations of both the African continent and China.

“It also seeks to ensure increased focus on Agenda 2063 and it’s First Ten-Year Implementation Plan as a driving force of Africa’s partnerships with the rest of the world.”

Among others, the summit will focus on a number of key areas critical to the growth of African economies.

The pursuit of Africa’s integration agenda is central to the continent’s developmental aspirations, said Deputy Minister Landers, who was confident that China will continue to be a partner on regional infrastructure development which ties in with the work of NEPAD in the context of the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA).

“China has the unique distinction of being the only country in the world to achieve full industrialisation within a 30-year period. The Chinese experience can hold many lessons for Africa. Skills and technology transfer, as well as agro-processing are amongst the sectors that could be of benefit to Africa.” – SAnews.gov.za