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The Africa-China Reporting Project (ACRP), in collaboration with the Boston University Global Development Policy Center (GDP Center) and the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), held the capacity building informative webinar on China-Africa Trade, Finance and Foreign Direct Investment, on the road to FOCAC.
The GDP Center and AERC recently published the China-Africa Economic Bulletin Report 2024, accessible at: https://www.bu.edu/gdp/files/2024/04/GCI_China-Africa-Bulletin-2024-FIN.pdf. This report analyses 22 years of China-Africa trade, finance and FDI data (2000-2022), to evaluate trends, reveal gaps and identify pathways for China’s support to Africa’s energy access and transition amidst economic challenges and energy opportunities.
China’s historic economic relationship with Africa positions it as a contributor to African sustainable development, a topic that will no doubt feature prominently at the upcoming Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in September 2024.
If China and African countries intend to tackle current development objectives like energy access and transition at the FOCAC, what forms of finance and which industries are promising targets for future cooperation?
During the webinar, researchers delved into the latest data and trends, highlighting how China-Africa economic engagement has evolved over the past three decades. They shed light on how China-Africa economic engagement has deepened across trade, development finance and foreign direct investment (FDI), contributing to African countries’ development and bringing economic benefits, while also seeing some environmental risks. Attendees gained valuable knowledge on how these factors will influence future cooperation and development initiatives.
The Webinar received great interest from across the globe, with 225 registrations, from various countries in North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia, as seen in the below mapping. This is an indication of the great interest to gain more knowledge and understanding among young and seasoned professionals.
One of the registered attendees wrote: “I am an aspiring financial and economic journalist and would like to obtain some knowledge about analysis.”
The Webinar was attended by individuals ranging from students, journalists, researchers, lecturers/professors, PhD and postdocs, economists, accountants, as well as professionals in policy making, public and private establishments of economics, banking, agriculture and trade sectors.
Speakers:
The Boston University Global Development Policy Center manages a suite of interactive databases that collectively track hundreds of billions of dollars in Chinese loans and investment to a variety of sectors, including energy and other infrastructure development. The GDP Center manages and updates these databases in a bid to provide transparent information to aid research, education, policymaking, journalism and accountability with regards to China’s overseas development finance and projects around the world.
Last year (2023), the GDP Center and the ACRP hosted a Webinar on Interpreting Data and Data Sources: Tracking China’s Overseas Lending, Development Finance and Global Energy Finance Databases. The webinar explored three of five interactive public databases. Publishing this data has helped journalists and researchers analyse and interpret trends in understanding, unpacking and reporting of China’s overseas economic activities. As a resource, these data projects can help stakeholders discover more about China’s overseas lending in an interactive and engaging way.
