INTRODUCTION:
Since year 2000, the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) started as a platform for China and African countries to interact at different levels in order to find solutions to their development opportunities and challenges. It was through FOCAC that China and Africa made some conservative but daring development strides of the 21st century, which has led to physical advancement and improvement of livelihood of the people. The FOCAC have therefore grown to become a meeting of serious significance for China and Africa in areas of infrastructure development, foreign direct investment (FDI), technology transfer, trade and investment. In 2023 alone, China’s investment in Africa have gone beyond USD 40 billion, which would have surpassed this threshold were it not for the Covid 19 pandemic. Therefore, the FOCAC has over many years been ascribed as the period to re-evaluate the progression in China-Africa relations.
The 2024 FOCAC meeting held in Beijing between 4th to 6th September, 2024, is yet another opportunity to renew the commitment of China-Africa relations at the highest strategic level of leadership. China’s President Xi Jinping is already meeting with African Presidents and other economic and diplomatic leaders from the continent. The FOCAC meeting is always to add grease to the engine of progress and modernization of both China and Africa. For many African scholars and observers, the FOCAC meeting is more strategic and deliberate than the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), which is coming up later in the month. That is because every FOCAC meeting comes with social and economic benefits, and provides African leaders with the latitude to discuss and negotiate development alternatives that will fit into their current realities.
This year’s FOCAC themed “Joining Hands to Advance Modernization and Build a High-Level China Africa Community with a Shared Future” will be one of the most determined intentions by political and diplomatic leaders from Africa in attendance, to collaborate with China, Africa’s largest trading partner and the most developed economy in the Global South, and I dare say in the world. The prospect in FOCAC is also pulsating with observers of international development from Africa, as the ground for reinventing the possibilities that Sister City Development could offer in China-Africa relations. The FOCAC is to build livelihoods and improve humanity hence, it has tried to come up with various agenda that are flexible enough to accommodate homegrown and other workable strategies for development. The Sister City model is now beckoning on FOCAC to leverage on in advancing humanity for a shared future.
WHAT IS SISTER CITY DEVELOPMENT?
Sister City model is a tool for development where subnational entities enter into development contracts and relationships with one another. It is often done by Governors, Mayors or Principals of Provinces where political authorities in these climes agree to official cooperation in mutually identified areas of development. It could be on trade and investment, infrastructure development, technology transfer, housing or health concerns. Sister City partnership is therefore a tool for constructive engagement in international relations that is seldom utilized. In many occasions, contact between two countries are usually driven by the national government and not sub-nationals. In the Sister City approach, subnational authorities chart the course for its development with another subnational of a different country who share certain similarities in identifying opportunities or challenges. The approach offers privileges to benefit from each subnational comparative advantage.
Sister City partnerships should be promoted to drive economic development and good governance at local government levels in developing countries, and FOCAC offers such platform to explore. There is a practical and long-term benefit to open up the space for vertical and horizontal interactions in China-Africa relations that Sister City relationship provides. The Sister City partnership supports home grown movements, share risks and pull resources together towards a common goal. It accommodates oriental values in international development where morality and mutual benefit seem distant away as a result of neo-capitalist tendencies. Hence, in a multilateral international system, all round cooperation and partnership are needed to drive popular global agenda, as yet providing the space for smaller players to find their pathways to inclusion and alternative development.
FORGING SISTER CITY PARTNERSHIP IN FOCAC
Africa is a continent with enormous promise and a space full of investment, technology, trade and infrastructure needs. These factors have never escaped the attention of any FOCAC since inception. The FOCAC tradition is for the Presidents of China to express the commitment of the friendship that exist, and will keep existing between China and Africa, and to chart the direction of China African cooperation for the next three years. This 2024 FOCAC has a 10 point partnership action plan to be implemented. The 10 point action plan involves mutual learning among civilizations, trade, prosperity, industrial chain cooperation, connectivity, development cooperation, health, agriculture and livelihoods, people to people and cultural exchanges, green development and common security.
It is now left for implementing partners to devise specific ways to achieve connectivity, trade, agriculture development and people to people exchanges in fine details. That is where the Sister City approach comes into play. President Xi has provided the agenda, it is now upon the business, diplomatic, political and economic leaders to invoke innovative pathways of collaboration, by allowing subnational businesses and investors to connect on a local level to find opportunities in certain areas of interest that may not be expressed at the FOCAC level. For example, the authorities in Shandong Province China could enter into an agreement with Nasarawa state government in Nigeria, to development a beverage company in part of Nasarawa state, as an extension of Tsingdao beer or malt drinks. Nasarawa state has the land, market and agriculture products that is used to produce Tsingdao beer or Malt drinks, which will benefit the Shandong Province mother company in terms of profit and FDI, while creating jobs, technology transfer and improved livelihood for the people of Nasarawa state. There could also be an exchange for medical personnel between both subnational on a long-term basis, to improve the health security of the Sister City.
CONCLUSION:
The FOCAC is a platform to reinvent the Sister City development relationship which has been an under subscribed strategy for international development in the Global South. China Africa relations can blaze the trail in the promotion of this approach for local government and provincial infrastructure development, to advance modernization and share prosperity among the people of the world. The FOCAC has come to stay and will be part of the calculation of South-South Cooperation for many years to come. The FOCAC should be a gathering where ideas are tested, innovations are supported, and developmental values are respected and democratized. The Sister City development approach should be on the agenda of the next FOCAC meeting in 2027.
Oboshi J. Agyeno PhD
Research Fellow: Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Abuja.
Email: jacobya007@yahoo.com
