Practice China-Africa Poverty Relief Cooperation 'According to Local Condition'

Chinese President Xi Jinping has announced plans to help Africa with various industrialization programs.

[File Photo: VCG]

CRI's Xu Yawen with more on what has China already done to help speed up economic development on the continent.

The introduction of Chinese fish smokers in Nigeria's Edeha village has had a dramatic impact on the household incomes of local merchants.

Since Chinese expert teams began teaching local farmers how to use new charcoal smokers to cook their fish, their product draws hundreds to their roadside stands.

Isah Fatimat, a mother of eight said that in the past, when she was using firewood to smoke fish, she earned around 5,000 naira (30 US dollars) every week. Since she started using the new charcoal smokers that learned from Chinese experts, her weekly income has been doubled to 10,000 naira. And now she has enough money to pay for school for her children.

Feng Yong, Deputy Director General for Foreign Economic Cooperation with China's Ministry of Agriculture.

"Charcoal smokers introduced by Chinese experts to Nigerian women have dramatically improved their incomes, more than doubling what they earn. In fact, the task of this project is to have Chinese expert teams teach Nigerian farmers how to apply the fish cage culture in the rice fields in order to increase both rice field yields and fish productivity, instead of how to grill fish. This technology has promoted more than 10,000 hectares, and hundreds of farmers have benefited from doubled rice production."

Zhang Yi, Deputy Director General for the China International Center for Economics and Technical Exchanges, says China-Africa cooperation on poverty reduction is more than just a copy and paste approach.

"FOCAC is a good platform for communications between two sides, to develop. But the development is not only for theories, it's for action plans. How to put those things really happen? There is no single easy approach of copy and paste, no adoption with no adaption could lead to a good success."

Victoria Sekitoleko, former Minister of Agriculture in Uganda, says she likes the way that China is working to alleviate poverty in developing countries.

"When China starts doing something, they don't give up. They know that their people who are operating, are human. So now and then, you need to monitor, and sometimes a plan may not be perfect, you need to adjust. So China does not give up, even if things don't go according to plan, they will go back, look again, plan again, and continue with the plan. For me, that works because we grow. So I like the fact that China does not just give up, they keep improving, and moving on."

In December 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that poverty reduction program were to be listed as one of the 10 major China-Africa cooperation plans during the FOCAC Summit in South Africa.

Since then, under the framework of FOCAC, China has implemented a series of strategies and made great progress in sharing its poverty alleviation experience with African countries.

Three years later in Beijing, President Xi announced in his opening speech to the FOCAC, that China will carry out 50 agricultural assistance programs, provide emergency humanitarian food aid to African countries affected by natural disasters, and send 500 senior agricultural experts to Africa.

When sharing its agricultural development and poverty alleviation experience with African countries, there is no such a thing as 'one size fits all'. But just as Sekitoleko pointed out, "China does not give up, they keep improving, and moving on."