Experts focus on China's role in Africa efforts

COVID-19 outbreak seen as governance test in international collaboration

China has shouldered its international responsibilities and strengthened collaboration and solidarity with Africa in the fight against COVID-19, global experts say.

On Wednesday President Xi Jinping made a keynote speech at the Extraordinary China-Africa Summit on Solidarity Against COVID-19, which he presided over via video link, assuring African countries that China will continue supporting COVID-19 containment measures on the continent.

While calling for solidarity and collaboration to combat the pandemic, Xi also unveiled a series of measures to help Africa deal with the public health crisis, including providing technical and material support and debt relief for African countries.

Nasser Bouchiba, president of the Africa-China Cooperation Association for Development in Morocco, said China has been shouldering its international responsibilities and obligations.

The convening of the summit means medical collaboration between China and Africa is moving to a higher level, "which undoubtedly will have a profound significance for the construction and improvement of African countries' public health systems", he said.

As long as China and Africa are united, difficulties will be overcome, Bouchiba said.

Moshood Bello of Keele University, in Staffordshire, England, said the decision of China to support Africa during the pandemic is a welcome development.

"At this stage of the pandemic in Africa, a lot of countries are finding it difficult to provide appropriate responses to defeat the virus. Unlike the rest of the world, Africa is finding it difficult to lock down due to inadequate healthcare systems and the poor state of the economy. Providing health and economic support for the continent at this time will significantly help a lot of countries to combat the coronavirus and safeguard the economy."

COVID-19 is a governance test in international collaboration, said Joel Ruet, president of The Bridge Tank think tank in Paris.

"While African countries have claimed debt relief, as an economist I think it is time to see if Chinese economic presence in Africa can now happen through equity and investment on the side of continued lending. The financial relation has to develop a balanced approach over various classes of assets."

This could set an agenda for the next meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Ruet said.

Mikhail Belyaev, a researcher at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, said China has made tremendous progress in the research of basic sciences, including medicine.

Medical collaboration

What is even more precious for the world is China's attitude toward international collaboration in the field, which aims to get the country and the rest of the world confronting the epidemic by sharing the results of vaccine studies, Belyaev said.

Stephen Chan, professor of international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London, said he was impressed by Xi's statement that China will cancel the debt of African countries, and he urged the world to provide debt relief to address the economic distress caused by COVID-19.

Many national economies have slumped because of the disease, he said.

Innocent Mutanga, co-founder and chief executive of the Africa Center Hong Kong, which promotes racial harmony between African and non-African communities in Hong Kong, said that in facing the pandemic all nations need to come together and help each other.

China-Africa relations could also go beyond debt relief and medical aid in the future, he said. For example, China could help Africa develop its capital markets, which would make it easier for local companies to raise funds from the public.

Franklyn Lisk, a professor at the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Regionalization at the University of Warwick, England, said the summit showed China has provided "generosity, compassion, and hope to Africa for its response to the uncertainty and anxiety of the COVID-19 pandemic".

Han Baoyi in London, Ren Qi in Moscow, Wang Xu in Tokyo, and Chen Yingqun in Beijing contributed to this story.