2022 was the first year of implementing the outcomes of the Eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), held in November 2021 in Dakar, Senegal.
The conference adopted four outcome documents, namely the Dakar Declaration, the China-Africa Cooperation Vision 2035, the Declaration on China-Africa Cooperation on Combating Climate Change and the Dakar Action Plan (2022-24). Also, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the Nine Programs that China will implement in cooperation with Africa, covering fields ranging from health to digital innovation.
In the past year, China-Africa cooperation has made considerable progress in areas such as mutual political trust, economic and trade cooperation, and people-to-people exchange, laying a solid foundation for further implementing the outcomes of the forum in the next two years.
Political trust
High-level face-to-face communication, such as that between heads of state and government, is an important mechanism for strengthening mutual political trust between countries. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously affected the operation of this mechanism over the past three years, China and Africa have overcome difficulties to strengthen high-level communication. One example was the Extraordinary China-Africa Summit on Solidarity Against COVID-19 held on
