UN Chief: China-Africa Cooperation Vital for Africa's Development

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres takes interview with Chinese correspondents based at the UN headquarters in New York on August 30, 2018. [China Plus/Qian Shanming]

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is pressing the importance of China-Africa cooperation ahead of his trip to next week's Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing.  

Speaking with Chinese media outlets at the UN headquarters ahead of his trip to China, Antonio Guterres suggests China-Africa cooperation is one of the keys to Africa's development. 

"This forum is an extremely important moment, in which it will be possible for Chinese leaders and African leaders to discuss matters of common interests. For the success of the African development, I believe China's cooperation is a very important tool and a very important instrument, and the success in African development will be largely the  success of the global development," says Guterres.

Guterres also says the Belt and Road Initiative is one of the tools which is helping reach development goals in Africa.

"We live more and more in a global economy, everything is interlinked. It's obvious that when we have such an integrated economy, it is very important to strengthen connectivity. Physical connectivity through investment projects in harbors, railways, roads, also connectivity in telecommunications and information technologies, many of which are contemplated in the Belt and Road Initiative," says Guterres.

Guterres also says China's cooperation with Africa aligns with the Agenda 2063 of Africa and UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

And he says that China-Africa cooperation is indicative of the broader cooperation which is being seen within the developing world. 

"The Africa-China cooperation today is central aspect of South-South Cooperation. South-South Cooperation is more and more important in today's world, not to replace North-South Cooperation…but as a fundamental tool to allow, in this case, African countries to benefit from the remarkable success of Chinese economic development in the past decades," says Guterres.

The FOCAC Summit, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday in Beijing, maintains a theme of "China and Africa: toward an even stronger community with a shared future through win-win cooperation."