China’s Xi pledges over $50bn in financing for Africa over next 3 years

File: Former South African president Thabo Mbeki. AFP/Gianluigi Guercia
Avbob Investment Plan
BEIJING – Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday pledged more than $50 billion in financing for Africa over the next three years and promised to help create at least a million jobs on the continent.
Xi’s comments came during a speech at the opening ceremony of a massive summit in Beijing, gathering dozens of African leaders to discuss the continent’s economic and political ties with China.
“Over the next three years, the Chinese government is willing to provide financial support amounting to 360 billion yuan ($50.7 billion),” he told African leaders in the Great Hall of the People.
The sum would comprise “210 billion yuan in credit facilities and 80 billion yuan in various types of assistance”, while also promoting Chinese firms to invest at least 70 billion yuan, Xi said.
The Chinese president promised to help “create at least one million jobs for Africa”.
The speech also included a pledge that China would “provide 1 billion yuan ($140.9 million) in emergency food aid… implement 500 public welfare projects, (and) encourage Chinese and African companies to invest and start businesses in both directions”.
China, the world’s number two economy, is Africa’s largest trading partner and has sought to tap the continent’s vast troves of natural resources including copper, gold, lithium and rare earth minerals.
“China-Africa relations are now at their best period in history,” Xi added in the Thursday morning speech.
Nigeria — one of Beijing’s biggest debtors on the continent — and China inked a joint statement agreeing to “deepen cooperation” in infrastructure, including “transportation, ports and free trade zones”.
 
– Expanding transport links –
 
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, in turn, obtained a commitment from Xi to push for new progress on a long-stalled railway connecting his country to neighbouring Zambia.
That project — which Zambian media has said Beijing has pledged $1 billion towards — is aimed at expanding transport links in the resource-rich eastern part of the continent.
Zimbabwe also won promises from Beijing on deeper cooperation in “agriculture, mining, environmentally friendly traditional and new energy (and) transportation infrastructure”, according to a joint statement by the two countries.
The southern African nation and Beijing also agreed to sign a deal that would allow the export of fresh Zimbabwean avocados to China, the joint statement said. 
And Kenyan leader William Ruto said Xi had promised to open up China’s markets to agricultural products from his country. 
The two sides agreed to work together on the expansion of the country’s Standard Gauge Railway — built with finance from Exim Bank of China — which connects the capital Nairobi with the port city of Mombasa.
And Ruto also secured a pledge for greater cooperation with China on the Rironi-Mau Summit-Malaba motorway, which Kenyan media has said is expected to cost $1.2 billion.
Ruto last year asked China for a $1 billion loan and the restructuring of existing debt to complete other stalled construction projects. The country now owes China more than $8 billion.
bur-oho/je/mca
By Sam Davies