On October 10, 2017, the international seminar on African Development and South-South Cooperation was hosted by SIIS in Shanghai, with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Over 10 African countries representatives from Ghana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya etc. attended this event. Participants also included representatives from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Chinese institutions, including Peking University, China Agricultural University, Fudan University, China National Health Development Research Center, and Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of MOFCOM etc.

SIIS non-resident fellow, Amb. Zhong Jianhua, Former Special Representative of the Chinese Government on African Affairs, and Amb. Sha Hailin, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress & former Chinese Ambassador to Ireland, gave keynote speeches to the seminar. SIIS President Chen Dongxiao and Prof. Yang Jiemian, Chairman of SIIS Academic Affairs Council gave opening and closing remarks respectively.

The discussions focused on the agenda setting and policy coordination of African development, African industrialization and economic transformation, public health and social development in Africa and the reform and innovation of South-South Cooperation. The following is a brief summary of the main observations.

1. Opportunities and challenges of African development

In the previous decades, African economies entered a period of fast growth, represented by Ethiopia, Rwanda, Mozambique and Angola. The high-rate growth helped Africa win the reputation that “the 21st Century is the African Century”. During this period, the main drivers of African economic growth can be summarized as follows: (1) The improved Terms of Trade of commodity products, such as in Angola, Nigeria and Mozambique; (2) Increased public sector investment and stronger government intervention, such as in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania; (3) Enhanced cooperation between wide Africa and China in financing, investment and trade.

Currently African development is facing the following challenges: (1) Manufacturing industries have not been effectively developed while the service industries are growing too fast. The agricultural sector is threatened by climate change. (2) The mining sector development is negatively affected by the large scale price fluctuation of international commodities market. (3) Weakness of manufacturing industries. (4) Spillover effect of Chinese economy slow-down. Meanwhile, internal conflicts, corruption and other social problems prevailing in some African countries also led to slower African growth to a large extent.

Some African participants pointed out that despite the high-rate economic growth, the income disparity is enlarging in Africa. The expected trickle-down effect, which means that higher economic growth in general will naturally benefit the poor, has not came into reality. Others held the opinion that the current statistics on GDP growth cannot effectively reflect the real development situation of Africa. We need a multi-dimensional measure of economic development beyond GDP to pursue a quality growth that is substantially beneficial to the life of local people. Based on the reality of African development, indicators of four dimensions are needed: population, urbanization, technology and government and economic management. Furthermore, indicators on retailing, consumption among others should also be included.

2. African economic transformation and industrialization

Most African countries are experiencing the economic transformation and industrialization, and in urgent need of large amounts of industrial equipments and supporting facilities. Take Côte d’Ivoire as an example, driven by the national capitalism model, the economy of Côte d’Ivoire recorded a significant growth from the 1960s to 1980s, and ever became an example for other Sub-Sahara African countries in sub-regional development. However, since the 1980s, the situation deteriorated sharply with the breakout of internal riots and the civil war. Currently, the domestic order of Côte d’Ivoire is stabilizing and its economy is returning to the normal track. During 2012 and 2015, the Côte d’Ivoire economy grew at an annual rate of 9%. More than 20% of its GDP growth was contributed by investment, which provides solid foundations for sustainable growth in the future.

Currently, the tertiary industry occupies too high a share in Côte d’Ivoire’s economic structure. The government is making a series of development plans, hoping to raise the manufacturing sector to a reasonable level. During the years of 2015-2016, the share of the second industry was 28.95%. Despite of this, the economic growth has brought limited effects on poverty reduction and job creation. The general technological level and international trade participation rate are still very low. Côte d’Ivoire made a series of development plans towards 2020 and 2040, covering national education, poverty reduction, energy, women etc. and seeking to increase investment in human capital and health among other social sectors. Physical infrastructure investment is also a priority for Côte d’Ivoire at this stage, including roads, airports, bridges, railways, etc. The policy planning should pay full attention to the implementation of the policies in spatial arrangement, environment protection and emission reduction etc.

There is a participant pointing out that Africa needs to promote structural reform in sustainable industrialization in the future. The following priorities need to be emphasized: (1) education and human resource development; (2) promoting clustering of industries for industrialization; (3) African industrialization to be prioritized as the direction; (4)infrastructure building as the important conditions; (5) agricultural modernization and relevant institutional building; (6) supporting small and medium sized enterprises and even micro businesses; (7) increasing stability of policies; (8) taking full advantage of the new opportunities of South-South Cooperation.

3. China’s role in African development

(1) Industrialization driving force and development challenges

China’s investment in Africa helps to establish the Chinese style export-oriented economic development model. The Chinese style special economic zones have been adopted on a large scale in African countries so as to exploit their own comparative advantages based on their own endowments. However, a series of problems are emerging in the practices. For example, many countries promote foreign direct investment through various fiscal instruments so as to promote investment, which has led to the rise of fiscal gap. The governments of host countries lack administrative capabilities and the special economic zones face potential challenges of financial sustainability. African countries need to enhance their governments’ governance capacities, administrative team’s skills and qualities, as well as local labor’s skills.

(2) Cooperation in health and social sectors

As one of the priorities of South-South Cooperation, China-Africa health cooperation has a long history. An efficient cooperative system has formed, covering dispatching medical teams, assisting the construction of hospitals, donating medicines, training medical staff, building capacity and medical industry cooperation among others. China aims to help African countries build a whole set of medical cooperative system through the above cooperation. Currently China and the U.S. are cooperating on a series of medical assistance programs in Africa. In order to make this cooperation more effective, the principle of African ownership needs to be respected, and the national interests of China and the US need to be better coordinated.

(3)Knowledge transfer with deep implications for China-Africa cooperation