China still committed to Africa despite Covid-19 disruption, minister says

Pandemic’s economic impact is ‘temporary difficulty’, head of foreign ministry’s African department says before Forum on China-Africa Cooperation meeting

Strengthening cooperation with the continent ’will not waver’, he says, after slowdown in Chinese spending

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Africa’s first modern electrified railway, the Ethiopia-Djibouti route, was built by Chinese firms. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 7:55pm, 26 Nov 2021Updated: 8:02pm, 26 Nov 2021

China will not scale back its investment in Africa, a Chinese diplomat said before a ministerial forum with the continent next week.

Beijing has become one of Africa’s largest creditors in recent years, lending hundreds of billions of dollars to governments to finance the bulk of their infrastructure. Africa is also home to a third of the countries that have signed up to China’s transcontinental infrastructure strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative.

But China’s dwindling appetite for large-scale investments, along with the Covid-19 pandemic, have led to a slowdown in Chinese spending in the continent.

Wu Peng, director general of the foreign ministry’s African affairs department, said on Friday that the Chinese government’s level of commitment to Africa remained the same.

“Africa experienced a relatively severe economic recession in 2020 because of the pandemic, but this is a temporary difficulty and we have already witnessed optimistic recovery in 2021,” Wu said.

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