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Sino-African ties to boost South-South cooperation

By Stephen Ndegwa | China Daily Global | Updated: 2026-03-17 09:02
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Locals visit the TAZARA (Tanzania-Zambia Railway) Memorial Museum in the TAZARA Memorial Park in Chongwe District, east of Lusaka, Zambia, Nov 12, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]

In March every year, the Great Hall of the People in Beijing is abuzz with activity as the nation holds the two sessions, the annual gatherings of the nation's top legislative and political advisory bodies. This year, on the sidelines of the fourth session of the 14th National People's Congress, Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a news conference that, as in previous years, was one of the most watched diplomatic events on the Chinese calendar — a moment when Beijing signals to the world exactly how it reads the global moment and what it intends to do about it.

This year's two sessions have been especially significant, as China is inaugurating its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) at a time when the global order is under visible strain. In addition, 2026 marks the 70th anniversary of the start of diplomatic ties between China and African countries, a milestone that Wang used to frame what may be the most ambitious Africa agenda that Beijing has ever brought to the two sessions.

What emerged from Wang's January tour of the continent — Africa is traditionally the first overseas destination of the year for China's foreign minister — as well as the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation coordinators' meeting in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, and Wang's news conference during the just-concluded two sessions is a three-step approach that will help deepen South-South cooperation. The three steps are: shared economic modernization anchored by trade liberalization, deepened people-to-people exchanges, and geopolitical solidarity through multilateral governance reform.

These three developments together will define what the relationship between China and Africa should look like in the coming years.

The economic dimension centers on a landmark commitment that Beijing has made — extension of zero-tariff treatment to 100 percent of tariff lines for products from 53 African countries that have diplomatic relations with China. This is a structural opening-up with few precedents in the history of South-South economic cooperation. Chinese officials have described it as "the shining hallmark of China-Africa cooperation in the new era", a signal of Beijing's willingness to shoulder greater international obligations and accelerate the development of the continent.

Over the past 25 years, China has helped Africa build or upgrade nearly 100,000 kilometers of roads and over 10,000 kilometers of railways, providing the physical web on which the flow of trade will depend. At the heart of the 2026 agenda is the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, or TAZARA, a line that connects the Indian Ocean coast to the mineral heartland of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. China, Tanzania and Zambia have agreed to revitalize the line and develop a prosperity belt along the full corridor, with Tanzania committing to doubling its exports to China by 2030.

Conversely, as Foreign Minister Wang faced reporters earlier this month, Lesotho was still reeling from the disruption of the United States' African Growth and Opportunity Act and punishing US tariffs on its textile industry. But Beijing has doubled down where some powers have retreated from development commitments, inviting African countries to board what it calls "the express train of China's development".

On people-to-people exchanges, President Xi Jinping and African leaders have designated 2026 as the China-Africa Year of People-to-People Exchanges. Wang launched the event in January at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, before an audience of over 200 officials and diplomats. He described people-to-people exchanges as "the most solid foundation of China-Africa friendship", and civilizational mutual learning as "the strongest driving force" for cooperation.

Governance-sharing sits at the core of the agenda. Beijing has proposed deepening exchanges on party governance, state governance and modernization strategy through platforms like the China-Africa knowledge network for development. Rather than simply supplying hardware, such as roads, ports and railways, China is now offering software — its model of managed development and poverty reduction.

Wang also said that the Global South must strengthen communication and coordination to jointly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests, and "expand the space for independent development amid the rise of hegemony and power politics". Africa is arithmetically indispensable to that project. With 54 African states in the United Nations General Assembly, African buy-in for the China-proposed Global Governance Initiative and Global Security Initiative is symbolic and numerically decisive.

On peace and security, Wang advanced the principle of African solutions to African problems, with China playing a consistent supporting role through its special Horn of Africa envoy and its emphasis on resolving conflicts through integrated development rather than political pressure. This sustained, low-conditionality and infrastructure-linked model contrasts deliberately with more interventionist approaches and carries genuine resonance on a continent that is wary of external strings.

What makes his framework compelling is not any single element but how the three steps fit together. The economic opening creates trade flows that require people-to-people trust in order to be sustained. People-to-people exchanges generate political affinity that makes geopolitical solidarity credible rather than merely convenient. And geopolitical solidarity creates the international environment — multipolar, rules-governed, resistant to coercion — in which both the economic and cultural dimensions can grow undisturbed.

There is structural discipline in the timetable, too. Beijing has set a clear three-year FOCAC implementation clock, starting this year with early harvests and aiming for midterm acceleration in 2027, with the 10th FOCAC Ministerial Conference marking full completion of the Beijing Summit outcomes. That kind of time-bound planning tells African partners that China's commitments are institutional and durable.

The author is executive director of South-South Dialogues, a Nairobi-based communications development think tank.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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