Barring any unforeseen circumstances, Nigeria’s President Ahmed Bola Tinubu would pay his first official visit to China to participate in the summit of the heads of state and government of the 54 member states plus China, of the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) slated to hold in Beijing from September 4-6.
The summit themed “Joining hands to advance modernisation and build a high-level China-Africa community with a shared future” will have leaders of African member states, representatives of relevant African regional and other organisations, as well as international organisations, in attendance.
About two weeks ago, China’s vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Chen Xiaodong, visited Nigeria and delivered an invitation to President Tinubu. He told the Nigerian leader that “he is an important leader and strategist in Africa”, adding that his visit to China and “meeting with President Xi Jinping will open up more discussions and opportunities for Nigeria and Africa”.
Receiving the Chinese vice foreign minister, President Tinubu commended “what President Xi Jinping is doing in Africa; helping with capital mobilisation for projects that positively impacts the lives and livelihoods of our people in Africa.” He noted that “the infrastructure need of Africa is monumental, particularly that of Nigeria. President Tinubu, who accepted the invitation to visit China, expressed his hope that such a visit would strengthen the existing bilateral cooperation between the two countries.
The 9th Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) is elevated to a summit of the heads of states and government and it will be the 4th of such summits since the founding of the forum in 2000. The first summit was held in Beijing in 2006, the second held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2015, was followed by another summit in Beijing in 2018. The fourth summit, which is the 9th round of the triennial conference of China and Africa, will hold in Beijing in September.
As a veritable mechanism for Africa and China engagement, the FOCAC process has been credited with both being a platform for dialogue and consultation and, more importantly, enabling practical and tangible outcomes that have generated concrete inputs to the national aggregates of participating African countries.
From infrastructure constructions, trade, investments to vigorous cultural and educational exchanges which has considerably upscaled capacity building and skill acquisition in Africa, the FOCAC process has responded to the existential needs in the region and helped in no small measure to ameliorate historical infrastructure and connectivity deficits. The 2nd and 3rd summits which were held in both Africa and China, since the assumption of office by President Xi Jinping, were particular game-changers in the China-Africa cooperation mechanism. The two summits with combined funding support of $120 billion outlined critical and targeted areas of cooperation, including infrastructure construction, industrialisation, agricultural modernisation, healthcare, capacity building and personnel training, cultural and educational exchanges, which have contributed immensely to the recovery of economies in Africa with practical outcomes of job opportunities, expanding intra-Africa trade, while also promoting the prospects of Africa regional trading mechanism, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA).
The FOCAC mechanism has become Africa’s most impactful platform of international cooperation and though, shone of the paraphernalia of international bureaucracy; imposing secretariat with an army of staff to boot; it is however extensively consultative with in-built follow-up process that leaves no room for complacency. The multi-layered framework of dialogue and engagements have continuously broadened as it is fitting for the current phase of comprehensive China-Africa cooperation as the crucial and strategic pivot in advancing the construction of a community of shared future for humanity.
Already, Nigeria-China cooperation is a vital driver of the overall framework of China-Africa engagement and the summit in which Nigeria would participate will reposition and reinvigorate the pivotal position of Nigeria in the evolving trajectories of her bilateral relation with China, whom it shares the same national day.
As the visiting Chinese vice foreign minister noted, Nigeria bilateral meeting, which is expected at the side lines of the summit, will unlock fresh opportunities. With Nigeria, under President Tinubu is implementing tough economic reforms, mere words and statements of solidarity as have been pouring from the West are not enough.
From Beijing, Nigeria would most certainly obtain practical inputs, especially with more investments, trade, infrastructure upgrades and most needed practical inputs that would not only cushion the current difficulties of the reform, but also add enabling critical support variables that makes tough economic reform, a worth-while endeavour both in short and long term. More importantly, China has a world-wide reputation of implementing the most successful economic reforms, with returns of not only ending absolute poverty among her 1.4 billion people but becoming the second largest economy in the world and the destination of choice for global investors. While copying mechanically China or any other country for that matter will offer nothing to Nigeria, it is however instructive that diligent study of the trajectories of China’s bold economic reforms will contribute meaningfully to align the long term goal of economic recovery, sustainability and improvement in the living standard of Nigerians.
For Nigeria, the objective China prospects for generating practical outcomes that would support the country’s economic recovery plans and strengthen her growth trajectory is an immense historic opportunity that would neither be missed nor trifled with. And China’s deliberate and demonstrable cultivation of Nigeria partnership which is at the historic inflection point of both comprehensive and strategic or both sides, need the complement of enabling policy instrument, political will and practical commitment from the Nigerian side.
Nigeria and China have come a long way in cooperation and collaboration but the current historical inflection point, in which China would have to strengthen the flank of its South-South cooperation as a bulwark to the menacing and aggressive West’s containment strategy and Nigeria’s daunting challenge of reforms and recovery, means both sides must deliberately calibrate cooperation to exceed the normal routine exchanges, despite how robust and mutual they have always been. The challenge of the increasing global landscape fraught with uncertainties means that traditional partners such as Nigeria and China would have to be deliberately creative, to not only sustain the momentum of their relation but also to inject the kind of imaginative dynamism that not only turns the existing opportunities into concrete and tangible outcomes but also even create more opportunities and translate them to public goods.
As it is well known, the forum on China-Africa cooperation summits, especially since the assumption of the presidency by Xi Jinping, has been a big deal both in the robust outlines of cooperation issues and accompanying funding support and this will reverberate in Beijing early next month at the summit. Nigeria will have to rise beyond the summit and conference glitz and glamour and set out the roadmap for practical follow-ups of summit outcomes.
The Nigeria condition is too dire for her leaders and officials to be contented with the photo-ops, handshakes and such other glitz of summitries.
One of the tales of China’s contemporary rise is diligent and methodical follow-ups to all the crucial blue-prints of her plans, whether conference outcomes, policy outlines, mutual agreements and other instruments or plans laid out in pursuit of the improvement in the quality of life of the Chinese people. Solemn fidelity, diligence and commitments to plans and implementations are some of the renowned attributes of contemporary China and, in some ways, the generalised factors of how nations rise and develop. Nigeria is traditionally challenged on practical follow ups of conference and summit outcomes, but this time, she has no option than to rise to the challenge and accumulate as much inputs as she can, to translate to domestic economic and social fortunes.
The Beijing summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) will in its tradition since its founding at the turn of this century, attempt to answer very innovatively the questions of the time and calibrate to meet the contemporary challenges of the participating partners and contribute meaningfully to their respective national aggregates. It will both reaffirm traditional friendship between China and Africa and also guarantee their collective trajectories to building China-Africa community of shared future.
The gains of the FOCAC process which has been enriched with the solid outcomes of Belt and Road framework of international cooperation will reaffirm China and Africa as the most formidable pole of peace, stability and mutual respect in the evolving multilateral and law-governed international order, despite the existential vicissitudes of the Western practice of power politics and bloc confrontations.
Onunaiju is the Research Director of Abuja-based Think Tank
