By Charles Onunaiju

At the turn of the 21st century, precisely from October 10 – 12, 2000, the first ministerial conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) held in Beijing, following earlier consultations. Nearly 100 ministers from China and 44 African countries were in attendance. A joint declaration at the end of the conference among other things explained that the two sides were “highly appreciative of the stable development of Sino-Africa relations over the past decades, have full confidence in the future cooperation and agree that there exists a solid foundation for friendly relations and cooperation between China and Africa, given their time-honoured traditional friendship”.

Twenty-five years later, the trajectories of China-Africa cooperation have justified the optimism expressed at the inaugural conference that the two sides “have full confidence in the future cooperation”, even as they agreed “that there exists a solid foundation”, for such cooperation, nurtured by “their time-honoured traditional friendship”.

China-Africa cooperation even before the founding of the FOCAC process has time-honoured pedigree. From 1967, China set out to construct in Zambia and Tanzania, the nearly 2,000km railway line, offered an interest-free loan to cover costs of constructing the line and supporting infrastructure of stations and training school as well as the supply of motive power and rolling stock. The interest-free loan was repayable according to the agreement in 30 years.

The proposal for the project, later dubbed the freedom line or Tazara railways was outrightly rejected by major Western powers then, and even * as economically unviable. China accepted to build it and duly completed in 1974.