BRIght FUTURE

Although the world is encountering instability, there is hope if Africa and China continue to promote economic openness and sustainable cooperation

In 2013, two years before member states of the United Nations adopted the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, China launched the Belt and Road Initiative. China has carried out development cooperation and contributed to policy, infrastructure, trade, financial and people-to-people connectivity, creating space and opportunities to promote high-quality Belt and Road partnerships. This is summed up as follows in the white paper by China's State Council Information Office under the title of "A Global Community of Shared Future: China's Proposals and Actions" published in September 2023.

"Together, participants in the initiative have jointly advanced hard connectivity, soft connectivity and people-to-people connectivity, setting up an important platform that has enabled wide participation, built international consensus and pooled the strengths of all parties."

Under the framework of the BRI, traditional infrastructure projects such as roads, railways, ports and power stations have expanded to Africa, Oceania and Latin America. The investment is significant and it serves to plug the world's infrastructure gap, especially in low-income countries.

By June 2023, China had signed more than 200 BRI cooperation agreements with more than 150 countries and 30 international organizations across five continents, yielding a number of signature projects and small-scale yet impactful projects. This is by any measure a significant success story, despite some criticisms and concerns.

As China has outlined priority areas and pursues its aim of becoming a world leader in high-tech, it is promising that the BRI will become ever broader and critical in the future by including areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, the internet of things, smart cities, semi-conductors, and quantum computing, etc.

This initiative is a bold, ambitious and transformative component to the implementation of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development goals. There is ample scope for countries involved in the initiative to benefit from the economic development through its projects.

Africa is a continent close to my heart. Today Africa stands at the dawn of a new era. Aligning the BRI with Africa's own development is beneficial through enhanced connectivity and sustainable development between China and Africa, and will deepen African regional integration, boosting intra-African trade as well as spurring industrialization.

Marked results can be seen in many sectors of the African continent. According to the report released by the Chinese Ministry of Education, Africa ranked the second, sending 81,562 students that accounts for 16.57 percent of the total international students by 2018. On the other hand, Mandarin is increasingly featured in African school curriculum and Chinese translators are in ever-rising demand on the continent. There is an increasing trend of Mandarin being officially taught in all schools alongside French, Arabic and German — languages already on the curriculum. The realization of the importance of educational cooperation is evident. It will help unleash human ingenuity, fostering innovation for inclusive, equitable and sustainable development for all.

Although the world is undergoing a tremendous change, characterized by growing instability and fragility, I believe that Africa and China must continue to foster closer ties to promote economic openness and sustainable cooperation, by respecting each other as equals. There are three reasons to be optimistic for the future.

First, China and Africa have an established friendship and successful diplomatic relations. Although China was relatively underdeveloped at the time, it provided extensive assistance to emerging African countries. A well-known example from the early 1970s is the Tanzam (Tanzania-Zambia) railway project.

Second, China has enlightened strategic approaches to partnerships and shared long-term development for all mankind. The year 2021 saw the BRI featured in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25). The BRI is a significant component of China's major-country foreign policy with a promising long-term outlook for those who are part of it.

Third, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation will build and extend the existing cooperation along with the initiative. The FOCAC has 53 African countries as its members and high-quality Belt and Road cooperation.

As a co-president of the China-Africa Leadership Development Institute of Tsinghua University, I have seen the initiative's potential for a deeper and wider partnership between China and Africa, working even more closely in support of knowledge sharing and active collaborations for sustainable development. The CALDI will do its utmost to support the capacity building component of the BRI and the FOCAC as well as contributing to inter-cultural dialogue and people-to-people exchanges with a focus on leadership skills.

To conclude, in the past 10 years, the initiative has shown tremendous successes in its implementation of transformative projects and holds a great potential to change relations between countries and peoples not as adversaries but long-term partners to make a planet where humanity can flourish and prosper.

The author is former UNESCO deputy director-general and co-president of the China-Africa Leadership Development Institute at Tsinghua University. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.