In early September 2024, the ninth conclave of the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) was held in Beijing, bringing together 53 African nations
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along with the head of the African Union. As has become commonplace in the reporting of FOCAC, there is a Declaration that takes the high ground of recognizing all the main global agreements between China and Africa, along with the principal achievements and promises of their cooperation (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the People's Republic of China [MFA], 2024a). The Declaration reminds the world that China is part of the Global South, “the biggest developing country,” while Africa is the continent with the largest number of developing countries. Then there is also the FOCAC Action Plan, laying out the details of what has been agreed upon, across all the main sectors from agriculture, industry, and sustainable development to Belt and Road Cooperation in infrastructure and science and technology (MFA, 2024b). Human resources are always given significant attention in FOCAC Action Plans and under several different headings. These include “mutual learning,” “inter-civilizational exchanges,” “knowledge sharing,” “talent development,” “education” and “people-to-people cooperation.” Overall, the Action Plan is a substantial document of some 68 pages and 19,000 words. Methodologically, the Plan and the Declaration do benefit from detailed, critical, textual analysis since FOCAC documents pay a good deal of attention to the language in which China–Africa cooperation is expressed.
The Declaration is marked by a keen sense of history. Thus, it recognizes the first 10 years of Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want (African Union, 2015). Equally, it recalls that 2024 is the 70th anniversary of “The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” or Panchsheel in Hindi, underlining between India and China, and with the Non-Aligned Movement, the crucial importance of these shared principles. In no less than four of the five principles, mutuality was underlined: “Mutual respect …,” “mutual non-aggression,” “mutual non-interference,” and “mutual benefit” (Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi, 1954). In respect of this ambition for peaceful coexistence, the Declaration underlines its grave concern with the “humanitarian disaster” in the Gaza Strip, and the need to recognize the importance of achieving a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine (MFA, 2024a, section 22).
Both the Declaration and the Action Plan make it clear that these are not documents on what China is proposing to do for Africa. Rather the documents deliberately emphasize joint action in the very large number of proposals and agreements across so many different sectors. This is illustrated in the language of the Action Plan. Thus, the sheer range of issues where China and Africa will collaborate in taking action can be illustrated by the frequency of the term “The two sides ….” Over the whole Action Plan, there are no less than 222 occasions when “The two sides” are proposing or doing something. Equally the term “cooperation” underlines this collaborative claim and is used no less than 312 times in the Action Plan. By contrast, there are 137 occasions when it is stated that “China will …,” indicating areas where China itself will take the initiative. However, capturing this joint approach to shared development ambitions and outcomes is the key term “mutual.” This crucial descriptor occurs throughout the Declaration and the Action Plan in relation to the following terms: support, benefit, trust, assistance, friendship, understanding, visits, respect, recognition, and learning. By far, the most frequent claim is one of “mutual learning.” This of course is critical in emphasizing that China is not the “donor” and Africa the “recipient” as in the traditional aid relationship. This remains the FOCAC claim despite the frequency of Africans training in China and getting scholarships to study there, as we shall see below.
The Declaration, we have said, usually takes the high ground and deals with global agreements and initiatives. In FOCAC 9, it is worth noting that there is a Global Civilization Initiative (GCI). This is one of 10 “partnership initiatives” between China and Africa aimed at joining hands in advancing the modernization of both China and Africa. In the Action Plan, the GCI turns out to be the first of these 10 initiatives and is also described, in fuller detail, as “the partnership initiative for mutual learning between civilizations” (MFA, 2024b, section 2.2.1). It covers, among other elements, the sharing of governance experience, a China–Africa network of knowledge for development, and 25 China–Africa research centers.
Another of the 10 partnership initiatives is for people-to-people exchanges. This covers many of the elements that will later in the Action Plan be described more fully. However, what is mentioned here is a China–Africa project for cooperation on vocational education, building, with African countries, schools of engineering, and setting up 10 new Luban Workshops. Beyond this, the offer of 60,000 training places is mentioned with a focus on women and young people. Still under this partnership, science and education cooperation are noted, along with centers for digital education, and 10 people-to-people exchange projects. Finally, there will be a collaboration with Africa on what is termed the “Cultural Silk Road” program and, perhaps in connection with that, some 1,000 culture and tourism professionals will be invited to China for training (MFA, 2024b, 2.2.8).
FOCAC supports talent development, education, and training
In FOCAC 8, in 2021, “Education” was discussed under the overall section of the Action Plan of Social Development, along with “Medical Care,” “Poverty Reduction and Rural Development,” “Science and Technology Cooperation and Knowledge Sharing,” and “Cyber Security.” However, in FOCAC 9, “Education” is located within a section called “Support for Talent Development and Empowerment of Women and Youth in Africa.” This raises the philosophical question of why talent development has come much more sharply into the FOCAC proposals. The term only appeared twice in the FOCAC 8 and just once in FOCAC 7. FOCAC 9, however, recognizes that both China and Africa see talent as critical for modernization and development. President Xi's FOCAC address underlines the crucial role of talent for governance and sees China's support for African scholarships and training as developing this key capacity.
In FOCAC 9, “Talent Development” is not only part of the title of a whole section, but it also has a sub-section dedicated to it, separate from “Education” and “Women and Youth.” We shall first examine the contents of “Education,” then “Talent Development,” and finally “Women and Youth.”
Education
The first item in the “Education” sub-section is the recognition of the African Union (AU)'s year-long celebration of Education in 2024. It is then proposed that the “Plan for China–Africa Cooperation on Talent Development” be connected to the AU Year of Education to support Africa's sustainable development (MFA, 2024b, 8.1.1). The “Education” part of the Action Plan then goes on to talk of the “China–Africa Vocational Education Cooperation Plan.” A key element in this is the further development of the Luban Workshops. Ten of these Workshops, named after a legendary Chinese woodworker, toolmaker, and artist, Lu Ban, were first promised at the FOCAC 7 meeting of 2018, and by 2024, they had become quite widespread across Africa and the rest of the world, numbering 19 in no less than 17 African countries, from the Cape to Cairo. Typically, they are based in technological universities, institutes of technology, and higher vocational colleges. Like the Confucius Institutes (CIs), they have a Chinese partner, many of which are in Tianjin, the originator of the Luban concept, and these partners are technological universities, institutes, or colleges.
The next item on the education agenda of the FOCAC Action Plan is China's continued support of the CIs. What is intriguing beyond the mention of the CIs which are normally based in universities is that “China is willing to reach cooperation agreements on international Chinese language education with education departments of African countries” (MFA, 2024b, 8.1.3). What this points to is the ambition to extend the teaching of Chinese into the school systems of African countries. Most African CIs have already been running some branches teaching Chinese in primary and secondary schools within the reach of their bases in host universities. But in some countries, such as Kenya (since 2019) and South Africa (since 2014), there had already been Ministry of Education agreements that Chinese could be, nationally, one of the agreed foreign languages. Other countries with similar agreements include Egypt, Uganda, and Rwanda. There were 14 countries in total that had adopted Chinese as an agreed foreign language by 2023 (Li & Zhuang, 2023), and this would rise to 17 by 2024 (Li, in press-a).
Further support for higher education collaboration with Africa is covered by the China–Africa 100 Universities Cooperation Plan. This scheme (of cooperation between 50 Chinese and 50 African universities) is based on an older 20 + 20 inter-university collaboration from 2010:
Recent years have seen increasing Sino-African institutionalized cooperation arrangements, including inter-university networks. For instance, the China–Africa Universities 20 + 20 Cooperation Plan in 2010, which links 20 African universities with 20 Chinese universities, has been scaled up to the “China–Africa 100 Universities Cooperation Program.” (Wang, 2023)
The focus of the 100 Universities’ scheme is broad but focused principally on the sciences. There is, however, a more targeted scheme within the remit of the education sub-section of FOCAC 9, that is, creating a China–Africa Regional Cooperation Center on Digital Education. This is aimed at digital proficiency for teachers and students, not just for the regular subjects but also for “cultural heritage.” A final dimension of the goals for “Education” in FOCAC 9 is a scheme for China–Africa cooperation in STEM teacher education.
Talent development
We noted above that “Talent Development” is part of the title for a whole section of the FOCAC 9 Action Plan, but it is also a separate sub-section. It is not easy to differentiate talent from capacity or from education more generally. However, at the beginning of the sub-section, there is a sentence that seeks to capture the essence of talent. It is noteworthy that it is not something that China seeks to develop for Africa, but it is seen to be a common resource for both China and Africa:
Both sides recognize that talent is the primary resource and tapping into this resource to drive modernization is critical to development and revitalization in China and Africa and to making development for the people, by the people and its fruits shared among the people. (MFA, 2024b, 8.2.1)
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This core sentence, with its presumably unintentionally faint echo of Gettysburg, points to talent as something that should be further developed. In this sense, it is similar to the word “capacity.” Along with the word “potential,” these point to the need to draw out or develop something that is inherent in people, whether in Africa or China. Of course, in this sense, these are not very different from the original Latin meaning of “education,” to lead out or draw out.
We can be almost certain that talent does point to the notion of potential to be developed, including by further education. In any case, it is clear in the elaboration of talent development in the Action Plan that scholarships and training in China are offered in many scientific fields covering agricultural, fisheries, aeronautics and satellite, digital, medical and public health, engineering, oil and gas sciences, as well as STEM subjects (MFA, 2024b, 8.2.1). There is a mention of seminar opportunities and training in a similar set of scientific fields as well as in culture and tourism. This may well be a reference to the large number of short-term training opportunities that China has historically offered to African personnel already in government or relevant employment in media, etc.
Vocational and Chinese language skills are also mentioned as talents to be developed in Africa, which appears to be in addition to the existing role of the Confucius Institutes. Possibly “vocational skills” are intended to cover the role of the new Luban Workshops which have already been mentioned under the “Education” sub-section above. Vocational medical skills and mining skills as professional enhancements are also proposed. However, it is intriguing to note that cooperation is mentioned in human resources and social security, along with lifelong vocational training, full and high-quality employment, and social insurance. These may be interpreted as sharing ideas for improving the widespread situation of informal employment in Africa's microenterprises which lack social security. However, this would be a hugely ambitious interpretation of talent development.
There is a return to the notion of talent development in the offer of “excellence training” for young agronomists and for leaders in rural development. It is noteworthy that there is a repeat of talent development of the education scheme for the China–Africa 100 Universities Cooperation Plan, already mentioned. Beyond that, there is a raft of suggestions for the health sector, including support for the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even more generally, there is an offer to “help African countries improve services in the medical system, step up training for African health workers and carry out academic exchanges and technical cooperation on medical care and medical education research” (MFA, 2024b, 8.2.7). A little later in this set of provisions, there is the offer of training for young African medical professionals in the complex fields of neuro- and cardiac surgery. Certainly, these could be seen as talent development, however demanding the processes of selection and placement in China.
Beyond the medical and scientific fields just mentioned, FOCAC 9's talent development also covers a program of support to culture and tourism, as well as to high-caliber professionals in the media worlds of TV, radio, and news through a media vocational training program.
Apart from the offer of scholarships already mentioned above, there is the additional provision of training for 1,000 African professionals and encouragement for young Africans to join the Talented Young Scientist Program as well as a Belt and Road Initiative Special Cooperation Program for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. In addition to these, there are 400 scholarships organized through the Chinese Academy of Science's “Belt and Road” Science and Technology Training Courses for Developing Countries (MFA, 2024b, 8.2.10).
Women and youth
This was the third element under the theme of “Talent Development and Empowerment of Women and Youth,” along with “Education” and “Talent Development.” Like the first two elements, there is a whole series of initiatives encouraging scholarships, exchanges, and cooperation. However, there are also new capacity-building projects across an ambitious range of areas including “poverty reduction, rural revitalization, ICT, fin-tech, mobile payments, digital economy, e-commerce, cloud computing, big data, and cyberspace security” (MFA, 2024b, 8.3.2). These have a special emphasis on women, but equally, there are multiple opportunities for China–Africa youth exchange through language scholarships, leadership training, entrepreneurship, and even a youth space alliance as part of a secondary school science project. An illustration of the sheer scale of what might be done is captured in the following ambition for youth business training:
China and Africa will set up programs in youth education, skills training, and entrepreneurship programs to equip young people with the knowledge and capabilities needed to succeed in the industrial sector, facilitate youth-led innovation hubs, incubators, and start-up accelerators to support the development of innovative solutions to local and global challenges. (MFA, 2024b, 8.3.4)
There is a similar range of multiple initiatives aimed at the support of women entrepreneurs. Equally, there are exchanges and cooperation for women and youth with disabilities.
Other talent, capacity, and training proposals across FOCAC 9: for China or Africa?
The above pages have illustrated just a selection of the many ambitious FOCAC 9 agreements and proposals in respect of a single section of the Action Plan, titled “Support for Talent Development and Empowerment of Women and Youth in Africa.” Across the other nine areas of China–Africa cooperation in the FOCAC 9 Action Plan, there are some 50 further references to “capacity building” proposals. These occur in the fields of industry, trade, Belt and Road, agriculture, business development, governance, security, people-to-people cooperation, and sustainable development. Similarly, in most of these 10 sectors of the plan, there are proposals for “training.” When we turn to the role of “talent” across the whole of the Action Plan, again there are schemes proposed for talent development in many different sectors. Indeed, there is mention of an overall “Plan for China–Africa Cooperation on Talent Development” (MFA, 2024b, 1.3).
While it is clear that most of these proposals for human resource development have emerged from the FOCAC 9 process, the documentation in the Action Plan also recalls historical agreements that are already in place. These include not only the reference we have made to the 70th anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, but the talent plan mentioned earlier may also be building on the BRICS
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agreement on talent development from 2023:
In August 2023, the Plan for China–Africa Cooperation on Talent Development was launched at the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. Asserting that talent is the primary resource underpinning economic and social development, the plan aims to train 500 principals and high-caliber teachers of vocational colleges every year, and 10,000 technical personnel with both Chinese language and vocational skills for Africa, as well as invite 20,000 government officials and technicians from African countries to participate in workshops and seminars. (Wang, 2023)
We have noted that the assumptions around talent development are that “tapping into this resource to drive modernization is critical to development and revitalization in China and Africa” (MFA, 2024b, 8.2.1). On the other hand, a careful analysis of the text and of the multitude of its proposals for China–Africa actions would suggest that despite the language of mutual “cooperation,” “exchanges,” and “people-to-people” collaboration across the document, the great majority of the proposals are of more direct benefit to Africa rather than China. Thus, the many references to training are principally for young professionals from Africa. The references to scholarships and seminars are similar for Africans to go to China or to profit from projects based in Africa. There are, by contrast, no proposals for Chinese to go on scholarships to Africa. However, the very frequency of the term “exchange”—no less than 95 times in the Action Plan—suggests that there should be a good deal of two-way movement and interaction between China and Africa.
Individual African countries are very seldom mentioned in the text of the Action Plan. Countries are mentioned, however, when, for example, there is a reference to a BRICS meeting in South Africa agreeing on something relevant to FOCAC or when it is noted that Egypt and Ethiopia have joined the original five members of BRICS. No single African country is mentioned explicitly as being a recipient of support from FOCAC 9.
The many references to the number of awards, scholarships, seminars, and projects for young professionals are nowhere broken down into their implications for any of the 53 countries present at FOCAC 9. The translation of the multitude of Pan-African promises of FOCAC into their consequences for any single country is handled bilaterally at the country level in Chinese embassies. However, there is no denying the organizational demands of translating the promise of, say, 400 Chinese Academy of Sciences scholarships or the training of 1,000 African professionals into a specific number of awards for any single country in Africa.
Even within the five pages of FOCAC 9 covering talent development, education, and women and youth, there is a multitude of aspirations and ambitions for China–Africa cooperation and collaboration. Part of the attraction of the FOCAC process is that China–Africa engagement and activity in these capacity-building fields are presented in so many different forms and through so many different lenses, it is easy to perceive their opportunities at both the country and individual levels.
Culture, tourism, and people-to-people exchanges
If, on balance, the bulk of the FOCAC 9 activity in education, training and talent development, and women and youth is to the advantage of the African side, this is much less obvious in China–Africa cooperation in the areas of culture, tourism, and people-to-people exchanges. The sub-section of the Action Plan on “Culture, Tourism, and Sports” captures this exactly in its first sentence:
The two sides believe that culture is an important spiritual bond that keeps the African and Chinese people together and tourism is a bridge that connects civilizations and strengthens friendship. Enhancing cultural and tourism cooperation has great significance for facilitating people-to-people exchanges and enhancing mutual understanding between the two sides. (MFA, 2024b, 10.2.1)
The belief that culture is a key arena for mutual learning is the reason that it is one of the 10 partnership initiatives of FOCAC 9's Action Plan: “The partnership initiative for mutual learning between civilizations” (MFA, 2024b, 2.2.1). Unlike a scholarship or training seminar where it is more obvious that one side is the beneficiary, cultural exchange, with its link through tourism, is a much more symmetrical theater of China–Africa interaction. Presumably, this is why, going beyond China–Africa, there is the so-called Global Civilizational Initiative announced by President Xi in March 2023. The backstory of such an initiative is that it seeks to promote the acceptance of parity among different cultures rather than spurious claims of cultural superiority:
In contrast to the Western claims of “superiority of certain civilizations and clash of civilizations,” China has called for upholding the principles of equality, mutual learning, dialogue, and inclusiveness among civilizations. It emphasizes the importance of cultural exchanges transcending estrangement, mutual learning transcending clashes, and coexistence transcending feelings of superiority. (Xinhua, 2024)
In President Xi's welcome speech at FOCAC 9, he used the opportunity to underline the 10 “partnership actions,” and it is perhaps significant that the “Partnership Action for Mutual Learning Among Civilizations” is the first of the 10 in his speech and in the Action Plan. Among the several actions mentioned by President Xi and included in the initiative is the decision to set up “25 centers on China and Africa studies” (Xi, 2024). This itself is intriguing as the proposal is not for Centers of African Studies or Chinese Studies—of which there are many already. Instead, it is for Centers on China and Africa studies which makes it sound like these centers should cover both fields. As it happens, when the same notion appears in the text of the Action Plan, it reads as follows: “China will support the establishment of the China–Africa network of knowledge for development and 25 China–Africa research centers” (MFA, 2024b, 2.2.1). There may be little difference in the original Chinese, but it seems that President Xi's text suggests that the centers should house both Chinese and African studies, whereas the Action Plan is more focused and points to centers that research the interaction between China and Africa, in the way covered, for example, by the research network on Chinese in Africa–Africans in China (CAAC), with its more than 1,000 members worldwide.
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The sheer ambitions of FOCAC 9 and its implementation challenges
This paper has focused on just five of the 68 pages of the FOCAC 9 Action Plan, covering education, talent, women and youth, culture and sport, people-to-people exchanges, and mutual learning. Within these few pages, we have identified over one hundred separate proposed plans, projects, actions, and studies. Most of these are highly complex, multifaceted operations, involving many actors on the Chinese and African sides. Over the entire Action Plan, with its total of 10 disciplinary sectors, there may well be more than 1,000 such proposals and commitments. What this means for costs is one thing, and President Xi mentions a figure of 360 billion yuan ($49 billion U.S. dollars) in his FOCAC 9 address, but the much larger challenge is how even these 100 Pan-African commitments in the human resources section of the Action Plan can be translated into action by China and the 53 countries of Africa that have signed the plan. Most of these commitments are hugely ambitious, but it may be worth selecting just four, from the text of the Plan, to illustrate the nature of these implementation challenges.
First, there is the promotion of the Chinese language in Africa, as presented in the 2024 Action Plan:
8.1.3 The two sides will continue to support the high-quality development of Confucius Institutes in Africa. China is willing to reach cooperation agreements on international Chinese language education with education departments of African countries and support Chinese language education in Africa through the joint opening of Chinese language subjects, training of Chinese language teachers, digital teaching and learning, etc. (MFA, 2024b, 8.1.3)
This builds directly on the proposal from the 2021 Action Plan from FOCAC 8:
4.3.7 The two sides will continue to support the development of Confucius Institutes and Classrooms in Africa. China welcomes the inclusion of the Chinese language into African countries’ national curriculum, and will further support Chinese language teaching in Africa through various ways.
It is important to underline that the FOCAC 9 text is not an evaluation of what was agreed in the FOCAC 8. However, a significant amount of bilateral activity by China at the country level in Africa clearly takes place between these Pan-African FOCAC fora and some of the results of this national-level activity have been picked up by relevant research in Africa on the adoption of Chinese as one of the recognized foreign languages in secondary schools. By November 2024, as mentioned above, no less than 17 African countries had officially incorporated Chinese as a possible foreign language into their national curricula at the secondary education level (Li, in press-b).
A second proposal from the hundred we have identified offers vocational skills to the continent. At one level, it is possible to say that in 2024 China is already supporting 21 Luban Workshops in 17 African countries for vocational skills development. However, the Action Plan commitment above appears to promise Africa more vocational skills training programs than those currently covered by the Luban workshops in a third of all African countries. Thus, there are plans for “lifelong vocational training systems” (MFA, 2024b, 8.2.5), as well as media vocational skills.
However, no exact, target figure for trained personnel with vocational skills is offered. Nor is it clarified whether trainees picking up linguistic, cultural, and media vocational skills can all be counted in the skills calculations. Nevertheless, it is clear that in the coverage of the Luban curriculum, there is explicitly space for culture and craftsmanship, as well as Chinese language learning.
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It must be remembered, though, that the Action Plan is far from being a research paper with targets, completion rates, and “lessons learned.”
A third example is taken from higher education: “8.2.7 China will launch the China–Africa 100 Universities Cooperation Plan on the basis of the implementation of the China–Africa Universities 20 + 20 Cooperation Plan.” The latter scheme involved the selection of 20 universities in Africa and 20 in China, leading to a whole series of annual bilateral agreements and actions on their cooperation. Clearly, implementing the 100 Universities Cooperation Plan, with 50 in Africa and 50 in China, would be significantly more demanding of time, money, and personnel as it aims to cover the partnership areas for talent development, including, among others, health, agriculture, fisheries, trade, mineral resources, the environment, language, culture, and digital education.
A final example could be from the “Partnership Initiative for Mutual Learning Between Civilizations” which we have just discussed: “2.2.1 China will support the establishment of the China–Africa network of knowledge for development and 25 China–Africa research centers.” Here too it would be fascinating to track, over the coming years, the character of the curricula, the location of the network, and its 25 research centers. As mentioned earlier, this could illustrate the character and achievements of these new centers with their joint focus on China and Africa.
Formal FOCAC follow-ups
There is of course a follow-up mechanism which has been in place for most of the previous FOCAC Action Plans, and there are agreed timings for Senior Official Meetings (including Beijing's African ambassadors) to review progress between the triennial FOCAC conclaves. Here is the key paragraph that captures the situation at the end of the Action Plan of FOCAC 9, looking back on what is claimed to be the successful implementation of FOCAC 8:
The two sides are satisfied with the efficient and smooth operation of the Coordinators’ Meeting on the Implementation of the Follow-Up Actions of the Eighth Ministerial Conference of FOCAC, the Senior Official Meetings (SOMs), and consultations between the Chinese Follow-up Committee of FOCAC and the African diplomatic corps in China. The two sides will continue to leverage the role of existing sub-forums under FOCAC, and further substantiate and institutionalize FOCAC. (MFA, 2024b, 11.1)
The massive ambitions of the human resources section alone in the FOCAC 9 Action Plan suggest that it would be valuable to look back at FOCAC 7 or FOCAC 8 and review some of their implementation achievements, whether in promised scholarships or jobs.
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Equally, it would be timely to look at some of the pledges made in the Education Action Plan for the Belt and Road Initiative (of 2016) and review its achievements 8 years later (King, 2019). Not least, given the ambitions around culture in FOCAC 9, it would be valuable to track over the next three years the status of the “work with African countries to advance the China–Africa ‘Cultural Silk Road’ program” (MFA, 2024b, 2.2.8).
The Declaration and the Action Plan are vision documents. They don’t provide a detailed monitoring framework for earlier FOCACs, nor an assessment of what precisely has been achieved and what has not. However, there is a follow-up mechanism just referred to, and reports are available from the meetings of senior officials from China and Africa charged with this implementation.
The value of the FOCAC conclaves every 3 years since 2000 is that they re-kindle a vision of South–South cooperation between China and Africa across all the different development sectors. Within the spheres of education, talent development, and women and youth which we have focused on, there are so many possibilities for follow-up actions. However, even if there are major challenges in implementing the 100 human resource proposals, projects, and actions, FOCAC has also got a broader, simpler, and more fundamental ambition: to promote “the comprehensive and in-depth development of friendship and cooperation between China and Africa.” Over its first 24 years, it would claim to have become “an efficient platform for South-South cooperation and a shining example of catalyzing international cooperation with Africa” (MFA, 2024b, 1.2).
Takeaway message
The Declaration, the Action Plan, and President Xi's keynote all address key elements of talent development, capacity building, and cultural cooperation between China and Africa in FOCAC 9 of 2024.
It is difficult to exaggerate the sheer ambition of this triennial FOCAC process, as there are a multiplicity of goals and targets for education and skill development, not to mention across the range of other sectors such as health, agriculture, industry, and infrastructure.
Although attention is duly paid to FOCAC's follow-up actions, the implications for implementation at the level of the individual African country are certainly challenging.
Illustrations of these challenges are drawn from just four of the very large number of proposals for capacity building in the Declaration and Action Plan.
Beyond the detail of ambitious goals and targets, FOCAC 9's documents also stand as a vision of and a commitment to continued international collaboration by China and Africa.
