Leaders from African countries and China met in Beijing, China, during the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) on 3 and 4 September to accelerate the social and economic development of Africa. Under the theme of “China and Africa: toward an even stronger community with a shared future through win–win cooperation”, the two-day summit served to further enhance Africa–China collaboration in eight key areas: industrial promotion, infrastructure connectivity, trade facilitation, green development, capacity-building, health care, people-to-people exchanges and peace and security. China’s President, Xi Jinping, also announced a US$ 60 billion package of aid, investments and loans to Africa.
During the official opening, the President of China emphasized that Africa has a lot of potential and is a continent full of hope. He said that China would launch a health-care initiative and that information cooperation and exchange on public health would be intensified. Cooperation programmes will be launched on the prevention and control of emerging and re-emerging communicable diseases, schistosomiasis, HIV and malaria.
The current Co-Chair of FOCAC, Cyril Ramaphosa, the President of South Africa, welcomed the new FOCAC initiatives, which will have a significant and lasting impact on peace, stability and sustainable development on the African continent. The current Chairperson of the African Union, Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, said that African countries will intensify work on industry, infrastructure and trade. Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, described FOCAC as an embodiment of two major priorities of the United Nations: to pursue fair globalization and to promote development that leaves no one behind. The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, highlighted the need to further create synergy between the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Leaders agreed the Beijing Declaration and the Beijing Action Plan, which will serve as a blueprint for further cooperation between China and Africa in the next three years. The outcome documents, which list ending AIDS and halting and reversing HIV (together with tuberculosis and malaria) as part of the China–Africa health cooperation, also focus on sustainability in health and included the local production of medicines in Africa, strengthening systems and developing public health worker capacity as essential to achieving universal health care.
In bilateral meetings with the Presidents of Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Mali and Sierra Leone, Michel Sidibé, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, highlighted the important contribution that China–Africa health cooperation can make to improving access to medicines and local pharmaceutical production in Africa.
The African Union endorsed the 2 million community health workers for Africa initiative, which was raised in the bilateral meeting with the President of Sierra Leone. Explaining to Mr Sidibé that he had recently visited a maternity hospital and learned that there are just two gynaecologists in the entire country, the President sees the community health worker approach as a key way to ensure that people are reached with essential health services.
Mr Sidibé met with the China–Africa Business Council, which also chairs the China–Africa Health Industry Alliance. China–Africa cooperation can generate transformational changes in health and provide a platform to find people-centred solutions for ending AIDS and expanding universal health coverage.
