China and Africa

China, Africa sign cooperation agreements in agriculture, water treatment

Updated 21:31, 15-Jan-2023 Cao Qingqing



The China Center of the African Academy of Sciences is established in Beijing, China, November 13, 2022. /CGTN

The African Academy of Sciences (AAS), the highest academic institution in Africa, signed several cooperation agreements with Chinese research institutions, universities and companies in areas such as agriculture, water treatment and animal health care on Friday in Beijing.

The China Center of the AAS was also established on the same day, with the goal of promoting talent exchanges and science and technological cooperation between China and African countries.



The African Academy of Sciences, its China Center and China Water Environment Group signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Beijing, China, November 13, 2022. /CGTN

The AAS, its China Center and China Water Environment Group (CWEG) signed a strategic cooperation agreement, under which the three sides will join hands to bring China's advanced waste water treatment technology to African countries.

CWEG's latest waste water treatment technology adopted in Erhai Lake, a famous tourist attraction in southwest China's Yunnan Province, just won a silver award at the 2022 International Water Association World Water Congress & Exhibition held in November 2022 in Copenhagen, Denmark for its significant innovations and contributions to the sustainable development of water resources.

The three parties signed another agreement to improve the soil health and crop management and promote smart water-saving irrigation technologies in Africa, so as to improve the agricultural productivity and promote sustainable development on the continent.
Hebei Agricultural University, one of the oldest agricultural higher education institutions in China, also signed an agreement with the AAS to strengthen exchanges and research cooperation between the two institutions.



Chinese experts from different research fields discuss the prospects of China-Africa cooperation during a seminar held in Beijing, China, November 13, 2022. /CGTN

Felix Dapare Dakora, president of the AAS, said the event is of great significance for strengthening China-Africa talent exchanges and scientific and technological cooperation in the post-COVID era.

The AAS is a pan-African organization headquartered in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, aiming at promoting sustainable development in Africa through science, technology and innovation.

So far, the AAS has selected 12 Chinese academicians in research fields such as crop breeding, infectious disease prevention and control, neuroscience, satellite navigation and remote sensing, insect and pest control, water treatment and molecular biology.
Nine of them were newly selected since 2020, who received their certificates at a ceremony on Friday.

"We're very happy to see more and more Chinese colleagues to become academicians of the AAS. Africa and China enjoy long-lasting friendship, and the two sides have cooperation in many aspects of social and economic development," said Dakora.

China-Africa traditional friendship shows 'new characteristic' as FM Qin concludes 8-day visit

China welcomes major Western powers to help Africa together, but opposes confrontation: experts

By Published: Jan 16, 2023 10:03 PM


Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang (left) shakes hands with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry after a press conference in Cairo on January 15, 2023. Photo: VCG

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang concluded his since his appointment on December 30, 2022, with visits to five African countries and two regional organizations on his busy eight-day schedule. Experts said the traditional friendship between China and Africa has been further deepened, and in a world in turbulence, the China-Africa relationship is a symbol of developing countries working together to withstand uncertainties and potential crises through cooperation and development.

The last stop of Qin's trip was Egypt, where the Chinese foreign minister met with President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, and Arab League (AL) Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit in Cairo on Sunday. Analysts said Egypt is a country that plays a leading role in the region and is where the AL is headquartered, so it's also a country with strategic influence among Arab countries and the Muslim world.

The Egyptian president said at the meeting with Qin that China is a great country and its development is unstoppable, and the friendship between Egypt and China has been historically "unbreakable," Xinhua reported.

Egypt will continue to firmly adhere to the one-China principle and "resolutely oppose any interference in China's internal affairs by external forces," Sisi stressed.

China and Egypt, as well as many other countries in the region and the Arab world, are both facing pressure and threats from some hegemonic powers, and the chaos and turbulence that hegemony has brought to the world in recent years have made more countries decide to stand closer to withstand the interference together, said experts.

Commending the fruitful results that Egypt and China have achieved in jointly advancing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Sisi said Chinese enterprises are welcome to invest and set up businesses in Egypt.

In light of China's recent optimization and adjustment of COVID-19 prevention and control measures, Egypt warmly welcomes the Chinese people to visit as soon as possible, the Egyptian president said.

Egypt's friendly attitude toward China proves that China's long-standing contributions to and support for the region and the whole continent have brought fruitful and reliable results, analysts said.

Liu Haifang, director of the Center for African Studies at Peking University, told the Global Times that the China-Egypt cooperation shows many new characteristics. "The two countries have had high-level cooperation to produce China's COVID-19 vaccine in Egypt, and China is now helping Egypt to build a new administrative capital in the desert. These successful examples are providing models for China's cooperation with other countries, not only in Africa but also around the globe."

In his meeting with Qin, AL Secretary-General Gheit thanked China for its many years of upholding justice in the international arena, its support for the development of Arab countries and the AL's unity, and the help it provided for Arab states in the successful fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Both sides agreed to speed up implementing the outcomes of the first China-Arab States Summit.

Qin's Africa trip started from , and by making Egypt the last stop, China shows that it is aware of the current changes in globalization - fragmentization and regionalization. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as well as the turbulence that has deeply disrupted global supply and industry chains, more and more countries around the globe, especially developing countries in the third world, are now focusing on regional cooperation to avoid crises and uncertainties, said experts.

China is supporting its traditional friends and partners to boost regional integration, connect the development strategies in different countries together, and jointly and deeply coordinate and cooperate on not only local issues but also international issues, analysts said. In other words, China is actively forming the model of cooperation between developing countries and the interdependency in a world of increasing uncertainties and potential new crises, and this is a new characteristic shown in the long-lasting close China-Africa friendship.

Qin also visited Gabon, Angola and Benin during his eight-day trip. Liu Qinghai, a professor at the Institute of African Studies of Zhejiang Normal University, told the Global Times that Benin is a country with great representation in Western Africa, and many international organizations are establishing their African branches in the country, adding that Gabon is a country in Central Africa, and these two countries are French-speaking nations. "The visit will further promote China's cooperation with French-speaking Africa," Liu Qinghai noted.

Following the Chinese foreign minister, top diplomats from France and Germany, as well as US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, will visit Africa this week. This shows that major Western powers have realized the importance of Africa, especially when they face huge challenges in Europe and internal problems such as economic recession and inflation.

China welcomes all other major powers to support the development of Africa, help African people to overcome challenges and solve problems for them together, but if anyone wants to bring bloc-to-bloc confrontation or even try to force African countries to confront China, it will pay a heavy price and eventually realize that such an unfavorable plan is doomed to fail, experts noted.

tphuang said:

I read the article. It completely overstates the importance of Cobalt. But then again, the politicians seem to be stuck in that frame of mind also.

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Completely agreed.

There are plenty of other countries that got cobalt. The US is merely trying to sabatage Chinese operations in Africa !!

Under the Radar: Africa is becoming traditional Chinese medicine’s best customer​

Traditional Chinese medicine provides China a surprisingly robust soft power tool in Africa, as Beijing increasingly exports medical expertise while also increasingly sourcing ingredients from Africa to meet domestic demand.

While China’s presence and influence in Africa is well documented – especially regarding resource extraction – another element is increasingly becoming an important economic and political tool: traditional Chinese medicine. Chinese involvement in Africa has long included a prominent medical presence, with Beijing supporting medical efforts on the continent for decades. As China’s export capacity increased in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Beijing began to increasingly augment its efforts in Africa with the promotion of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).

The inaugural China-Africa Forum on Traditional Medicine was held in Beijing in 2000, with 21 African health ministers in attendance. This push coincided with efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO), which earmarked traditional medicine a policy priority for Africa in 2001. That same year the African Union declared 2001-2010 to be the ‘Decade of African Traditional Medicine’. This supranational focus aided Chinese efforts in promoting TCM in Africa, drawing on the parallels between African and Chinese medical practices.

Traditional Chinese medicine a major growth market​

In 2003, vice minister of commerce, Wei Jianguo argued that “China and Africa should take advantage of the continent’s long history of applying traditional medicines and China’s established theories and mature techniques in traditional Chinese medicine [to] enhance bilateral economic and technological exchange and mutually beneficial cooperation.” This sentiment was echoed by Koukouvi Apelete, chairman of the Togolese Association of Traditional Medicine Practitioners, in February 2017: “collaboration between traditional Chinese medicine and African traditional medicine practitioners is possible and will profit both sides. Both medicines are complementary.”

Since then the global herbal medicine market has grown to $60 billion, with Africa becoming the largest medicine export market for China in 2012. This figure is in addition to the domestic Chinese traditional medicine market, which accounts for 22.4% of the national pharmaceutical industry, and one third of China’s gross medicine production. Despite rising incomes and increased access to western medicine, China’s growing middle class still prefers to consume TCM products: China’s domestic TCM market has seen 20% growth for the past five years and now stands at $114.2 billion.


With over a million Chinese expats in Africa, the number of TCM practitioners there is also increasing, serving both Chinese and local clientele. TCM often fills coverage gaps in African healthcare systems, as well as providing cheaper alternatives to government or private western medicine clinics. Financial restraints, existing traditional medicine usage and suspicions about the quality of medicine and care in mainstream facilities provides a ready potential consumer base for TCM.

Dr. Ebrahim Sanba, former WHO Regional Director for Africa noted that “for more than 80% of Africans, traditional medicine is the first or only resort. There is clinical evidence which indicates that traditional medicines are effective for the treatment and/or management of some health conditions such as malaria, sickle cell anemia, diabetes and HIV/AIDS.” Indeed, Tu Youyou won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine for her discovery of the antimalarial agent artemisinim thanks to her work with traditional Chinese medicine. This discovery has become the posterchild for the benefits of TCM, and one that particularly resonates in Africa, where as much as 1.5% of GDP is lost due to the disease in high risk countries.

To this end, China is pushing TCM as a key pillar of its new innovation driven growth model as it transitions from a manufacturing based economy. A key element in this effort is promoting TCM in Africa, both as an effective soft power tool and expanding export market. This engagement is seen in Malawi and China’s April 18th memorandum of understanding to draft a national policy for traditional medicine accreditation, and develop traditional medicine programs at the Chinese-built Malawi University of Science and Technology. The focus will be on eliminating malaria in Malawi. More recently, Beijing organized the China-Africa Malaria Symposium on April 21st, where Fouad Mohadji, former Comoros vice president stated that “this continent should adopt alternative therapies from China that are cheaper, yet have proved to be effective in treating malaria.”


These events come on the heels of the first China-Africa International Cooperation and Development Forum on Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pharmacy, held in Cape Town, attended by over 1,000 African students. China is also increasingly host to African students studying TCM in Chinese universities and medical schools, a trend showcased on April 3rd as Nanjing University invited African journalists to meet African TCM students in China.

Yellen's trip to Africa including sideswipes at Russia and China. Be interesting to see what South Africa say to her:

Maikeru said:

Yellen's trip to Africa including sideswipes at Russia and China. Be interesting to see what South Africa say to her:

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the military drills will continue as planned.

Quoted from the China News Thread.

When the US is promoting woke LGBTQ+ ideologies to Africa, China is helping African to promote Africa-made products in China (and hopefully elsewhere too):

I'm not familiar with the Financial Action Task Force, but this action is way too suspicious given South Africa's military exercises and Nigeria's upcoming elections.

The Paris-based FATF also added Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy, to its grey-list on Friday.

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Having South Africa added to the grey-list could also complicate its attempts to obtain funding and support from multilateral development institutions and official lenders, analysts said.

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Being put on the grey list could disrupt a country's capital flows, the International Monetary Fund found in a 2021 paper, with banks possibly exiting relationships with customers based in high-risk countries to reduce compliance costs.

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If I had to guess, maybe they're hoping the economic effects in Nigeria will be blamed on the incumbent and lower his ratings. Their blatant election meddling is disgusting. But then again, the West proselytizes liberal democracy, it makes sense they would know best how to subvert it.

A recent article got put out on how Israeli cyberwarfare has tried to sabotage prior Nigerian elections.

In a slideshow called “What we do” he showed a slide with the heading “Wrecking havoc during African election day”, followed by a screengrab from a newspaper article that appeared in Vanguard, a reputable media outlet, which reported how, on election day, leaders in Buhari’s All Progressives Congress party (APC)

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because they were bombarded with calls.
Lai Mohammed, who was the opposition APC chief spokesperson during the 2015 election, appears to have been a target. Now a minister for information in the Nigerian government, his aide recalled the incident.
“We were at the party’s situation room in the morning of the presidential election, only to discover that his phone line had been blocked,” the aide said. “He could neither receive nor make calls, and that was very serious because he was the live wire of the opposition.”

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The ongoing encirclement of Europe:

Following his election in 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron said he wanted to reset relations with francophone Africa based on a “partnership of equals.” If anyone has been doing so, it’s been Russia. As France has been run out of Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, and Mali, Moscow has moved in.

Many troops are being moved to Niger, which is of existential importance to Paris. Three out of four light bulbs in France are powered by Nigerien uranium. In contrast, only 10 to 20 percent of Nigeriens in urban areas have access to electricity, while roughly 3 percent do in the rural areas.


Media like Politico France’s retreat on Russian disinformation and warn of a domino effect in other French outposts, such as Niger and the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire. But of course the reality points to Russia and China winning the battle for “hearts and minds” in the new Cold War we find ourselves in.

Russia’s opportunistic “democratic security” deals with these African states are fairly straight-forward: Russia / the Wagner Group offer military support, arms deals, political backing at the UN and strategic investments. The arrangements are meant to be mutually beneficial and are part of Russia’s appeals to the Global South to prevent Western efforts to isolate it. This was laid out by Putin in his following the signing of treaties on accession of Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and Zaporozhye and Kherson regions to Russia. What exactly is Russia helping defend against, though?

In the Sahelian states of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, US-trained forces have conducted seven coups since 2008.

Rarely, however, have so many coups been so concentrated in a region over such a short period of time. Last fall, after returning from a trip, alongside other top State Department and Pentagon officials to the Sahelian states of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, Ambassador Victoria Nuland was upbeat. “We went to the region in force. We were looking, in particular, at how the U.S. strategy towards the Sahel is working. This is a strategy that we put in place about a year ago to try to bring more coherence to our efforts to support increased security,” she said during an October conference call with reporters.
After Rolling Stone pointed out that U.S.-trained military officers had conducted seven coups in these same countries—Burkina Faso, three times; Mali, three times; and Mauritania, one time—since 2008, Nuland was less sanguine. “Nick, that was a pretty loaded comment that you made,” she replied. “Some folks involved in these coups have received some U.S. training, but far from all of them.”
The fact is the leaders of all of these coups have received significant U.S. training.

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Unfortunately for Nuland, these US-trained officers are now ditching the US for Moscow. Russia’s military prowess and its willingness to take on the West is an attractive alternative, and it also serves as an interesting complement to China’s economic tools. Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based political analyst,

Without first securing their sovereignty, these African states can’t sustainably benefit from China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) investments, hence their prioritization of ties with Moscow over Beijing nowadays.
That observation isn’t to imply that Russia is eroding China’s partnerships in Africa, but rather to raise awareness about how these two complement one another since the first ensures that those states’ sovereignty is secure while the second then helps them meaningfully benefit afterwards.

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And that’s what is happening. Ken Opalo, a political scientist at Georgetown University, writes at

Importantly, France is no longer the undisputed major power when it comes to francophone African countries’ foreign relations. The last two decades have seen China supplant France as these countries’ largest trade partner. China is now a bigger trade trade partner for francophone African states than the United States, the United Kingdom, and France combined. More recently, countries like the Central African Republic (CAR), Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali have forged closer security ties with Russia. France’s situation looks even worse when one considers its share of total trade to/from its former African colonies. Among these countries, French share of trade plummeted from more than a quarter in the early 1990s to just over 5%.

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It could be an effective arrangement. Russia provides the muscle, while China deals with the investments. Whether Russia intends it or not, its moves into Africa could also have major repercussions for Europe’s energy future. Brussels is attempting a major turn to Africa in order to partially replace supplies of Russian energy and better secure green resources.

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​

Beijing has a longstanding relationship with Maputo, the Mozambican capital, which features a recently and Africa’s, both courtesy of Chinese companies. China and second largest export destination.



Last year the Chinese National Offshore Oil Company was awarded five exploration blocks in the most recent Mozambique licensing round. The China National Petroleum Corporation has 20 percent of area 4 off the coast of Cabo Delgado, where LNG shipments from a floating platform began late last year.

For China, Mozambique is important source of timber, titanium, sand processing as well as other resources. Beijing also uses Mozambique as an entry-exit point for landlocked and resource countries Zimbabwe and Zambia.

China has also been increasing its footprint in Mozambique by buying stakes in Portuguese companies. From :

China has become the fourth largest foreign investor in Portugal. The state-owned China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) recently took a controlling interest in Mota-Engel, the largest Portuguese construction company which also is largest in Mozambique. It is involved in construction relating to the Cabo Delgado LNG production facility, mining, and Maputo apartment blocks. Most recently it has been involved in constructing wharf and unloading facilities in Palma and Afungi.

The Fosum group is the biggest shareholder in Portugal’s largest bank, Millennium bcp, with 29.95%; Millennium bcp owns 66.7% of Millennium bim, the largest bank in Mozambique. China Three Gorges (CTG) is the largest shareholder in EDP Energias de Portugal with 20.22%. EDP is a leader in renewable energy and has projects in Mozambique.

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Mozambican government officials regularly praise Chinese aid and investment, as Beijing is the country’s largest bilateral creditor at $2.2 billion. Every president since Mozambican independence in 1975 has made multiple trips to China, and it has also hosted every Chinese president and almost every premier for official state visits over the same time period.



As Europe’s energy severance from Russia continues, France’s Totalenergies is moving forward with efforts to get a Mozambique LNG project back on track despite serious concerns over violence and human rights abuses in the region. The project was mothballed back in early 2021 due to violence, but is now expected to restart this summer.



From and :

The Mozambique government is promoting a narrative of ‘foreign Islamic terrorists’ disrupting the LNG projects, but this doesn’t represent the reality of the situation, nor reflect the role that the LNG projects have had in drawing those eager to cash in, and fuelling violence in an impoverished region of a country which is both one of the poorest in the world, and still recovering from a bloody civil war. Since 2017 thousands of civilians have been killed, and

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have been forced to flee – being chased from their homes with very few possessions.

Beyond the conflict, 550 families were directly displaced via corporate land grabs, and the blocking of access to fishing grounds, to make way for the infrastructure required for the LNG projects. Promises from the LNG industry of new land and jobs have not been met, and displaced families now struggle to make a living without their traditional livelihoods.

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According to displaced Mozambicans, the insurgency today was born out of anger over government corruption, poverty, and poor economic policies. In 2013, three Mozambican state-owned companies

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from international banks, but the loans were contracted without parliamentary approval plunging the

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in the world into a financial crisis yet to be recovered from. This did little to help the

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of Mozambique’s population, especially those in the north, who live below the poverty line.

While Cabo Delgado is resource rich with vast mineral and gas deposits, local Muslim ethnic groups, namely the Mwani and Makua who make up the core of [Ahlu Sunna Wa-Jamo], are

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; including those of French Total’s, a European multinational energy and petroleum company, $20 billion Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) project off the northern coast. The state’s inability to address these social, religious, and political dynamics served as ASWJ’s tipping point into armed action.

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As Total faced problems getting its LNG operation up and running, the description of the insurgency changed from a battle over economic grievances to one of international Islamic terrorism. The US entered the fray, sending Green Berets to Mozambique to “.” It also conveniently provided a cover for the US and France, who have important economic interests in Cabo Delgado and want to keep Russia and China out of the region.

Beyond the natural gas, the US is also interested in using Mozambique to bypass China in the control of critical minerals, in this case graphite, for the green energy transition.

Mozambique was one of five African countries invited to the US Minerals Security Partnership on the sidelines of last year’s UN General Assembly. At the meeting Secretary of State Anthony Blinken mentioned the importance of a mine in Cabo Delgado from which graphite will be sent to Louisiana for processing. From

The US Department of Energy (DoE) in an 18 April statement said “today the United States is 100% reliant on imported graphite as China produces nearly all of the high-purity graphite needed to make lithium-ion batteries.”

The DoE is providing $107 mn loan to the Australian owners of Balama, Syrah Resources, to build a processing factory in Vidalia, Louisiana, to produce graphite-based anodes for lithium-ion batteries. The DoE said the plant would create “98 good-paying, highly skilled operations jobs within the clean energy sector.”

Yet again, Mozambique gets nothing but a hole in the ground, while the manufacturing is in the US.

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Even if US and EU backing help Rwandan and Mozambican forces completely clear Cabo Delgado so the LNG projects can hum along uninterrupted, it will still be a drop in the bucket of the effort to replace Russian gas. , the entire African continent’s proven gas reserves are equivalent to 34 percent of Russian resources. In 2020, total gas trade between Europe and Russia was nearly 185 bcm. Mozambique hit 14 bcm by 2025 if everything breaks right.