#Focac: Johannesburg - The inaugural business forum at the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (Focac) summit in Johannesburg was declared a resounding success by business and political leaders from China and South Africa on Friday.
At a session chaired by South Africa's Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies and his Chinese counterpart Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng all parties welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping's earlier pledge of $60 billion over three years to fund development on the continent.
Davies opened the session by describing the three-year programme as “ambitious, well thought out, and incredibly uplifting”, and emphasised that it was up to business people in South Africa and China to work together to “make it happen”.
South African President Jacob Zuma, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, and African Union Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma all took the opportunity in their addresses to welcome Xi's pledges and commended proposals that came out of the business forum, and noted how the former depended on the latter for implementation.
Representatives of Chinese and South African industry echoed the sentiments of the politicians and noted that a number of themes in Xi's proposals were very similar to those agreed among business people at the forum.
Themes that resonated loudly included the need to have a more equal partnership between the two parties, the urgent need for industrialisation in Africa, and further beneficiation of raw materials on the continent.
Delegates at the business forum had already indicated that they were united in the view that the relationship between the two countries needed to continue to evolve. South African and Chinese delegates from sectors, ranging from banking and telecommunications to rail and construction, agreed that what needed to happen was already under way.
The traditional historical model for Chinese companies doing business in Africa has been on the basis of engineering, procurement, construction (known as EPC) - where a contractor designs a project, procures all the equipment and materials, and constructs and delivers the facility to a client.
The change that has already begun is that this model is giving way to one where the Chinese investor commits to working with a local partner and takes an equity stake in a joint venture.
Estimates of the number of deals agreed during the business forum varied from 22 valued at $13.8 billion to 25 agreements with a total value of $16.5 billion. Business people from both countries, represented at the session by SA Black Business Council CEO Mohale Ralebitso and China Communications Construction Company chairman Liu Qi Tao, called on politicians to do what was required of them to “make it happen”, including providing better infrastructure and removing barriers to intra-African trade.
Treating Africa as one market, they said, would give African industry the critical mass that had helped China become an industrial superpower. All parties echoed the desire to change the logo of “Made in China” to “Made in Africa with China”.
AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY