Xi Jinping denies China is spending money on African ‘vanity projects’
Chinese President tells African leaders that infrastructure projects on continent are designed to remove main barriers to development
Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Monday that Chinese funds are not for “vanity projects” in Africa but are to build infrastructure that can remove bottlenecks in the continent’s development.
Speaking at a business forum ahead of the start of a once-every-three-years China Africa summit, Xi said: “Resources for our cooperation are not to be spent on any vanity projects, but in places where they count the most.”
“Inadequate infrastructure is believed to be the biggest bottleneck to Africa’s development,” he added.
Chinese officials say this year’s summit will strengthen Africa’s role in Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative to link China by sea and land through an infrastructure network modelled on the old Silk Road with southeast and central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
Xi said that the plan, which Beijing has pledged US$126 billion for, would help provide more resources and facilities for Africa and would expand shared markets.
Xi was expected to address the opening of the summit later in the day.
From 2000 to 2016, China loaned around US$125 billion to the continent, data from the China-Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Washington’s Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies shows.
It is the most significant contributor to high debt risks in three African countries, the Republic of Congo, Djibouti, and Zambia, CARI said last week.