By OLUSEGUN OBASANJO
April 2021
At the beginning of each year, Chinese diplomats visit
Africa as a symbol of the special relationship that exists
between our peoples. In February 2021, China and my
country, Nigeria, celebrated our 50th anniversary of
bilateral cooperation. Fifty years ago, Africa also played
an important role in helping The People's Republic of
China attain its rightful place at the United
Nations. Nigeria and China are two of the
world’s most populous nations, with Nigeria projected to
become the third most populous country by 2050. With our
shared desire for collaboration in development and
maintaining peace and security in the world, we have
much in common for mutual interest and global interest.
An important difference is that in Africa, we have the
youngest population of any region. According to the United
Nations, three quarters of Africa’s population is under
the age of 35. Given access to education and opportunity,
these young people will transform their countries, Africa
and the world. As many nations face the challenges of an
aging demography, we have the potential for tremendous
innovation and economic growth, some of which is already
being realized. For example, The Africa Progress Group,
which I chair, recently released a report on health,
education and agriculture, “Making Africa's Population An
Asset.”
During my time as President of Nigeria, we recognized that
effective transportation was a key driver of economic
growth, and we made the modernisation of our railway one
area of focus of our twenty-five-year strategic
vision. This vision is also central to China’s Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI), through which countries around the
world have been supported in efforts to connect
communities and facilitate growth. The flagship BRI
project in East Africa, the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge
railway in Kenya, completed in 2017, reduces passenger
travel time between the two cities from 10 hours to four
hours. Nigeria formally joined the BRI in 2018 but worked
with China on infrastructure projects in the years prior.
The completion of the Abuja-Kaduna rail line in 2014 is an
example of one such success: the 186km line transports
both goods and people quickly and safely, having
employed thousands of Nigerians to build and
operate.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed African
leaders at the 2015 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, he
committed to helping Africa reach its infrastructure and
development goals, stating: “Poverty is the root cause of
chaos while peace is the guarantee for development.” A
recent World Bank report has forecast that the Belt and
Road initiative has the potential of increasing world
trade by over 6% and increasing global income by 2.9%.
Trade and jobs are central to our vision of
making Africa's Population An Asset. In
Nigeria, we have witnessed what can happen when young
people are uneducated and consequently unemployed: many
are forced to leave their home in pursuit of opportunities
elsewhere, and some are preyed on by radical forces. This
was the theme of a Youth Migration Summit hosted at my
presidential library in Abuja in which we emphasized the
importance of building bridges of opportunity within and
between countries; not walls. One positive example is
Africa’s Great Green Wall, which combats climate change
through large scale planting and restoring degraded land,
while creating jobs and preventing the need for
migration. I proposed this idea in Burkina Faso
during a Climate Change Summit when I was still President
of Nigeria. The success of this project will have
great impact on flora and fauna in Africa.
In my keynote speech to the InterAction Council in 2016, I
spoke about the importance of China as an economic trading
partner with Africa and how that relationship helped to
insulate Africa from the 2008 financial crisis. That same
spirit of partnership is needed to solve Africa’s
infrastructure deficit on the basis of mutual and balanced
relationship.
A large infrastructure gap continues to hold Africa back
from reaching its full potential. Without leapfrogging
development of infrastructure in Africa, the Africa
Continental Free Trade Agreement, AfCFTA, which began
trade on January 1, 2021 will not advance
fast. McKinsey projects that there needs to be
a doubling of annual investment in infrastructure in
Africa by 2025, to US$150 billion. According to McKinsey,
“nearly 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lack
access to grid electricity—accounting for over two-thirds
of the global population without power.” The way to move
forward, of course, is to promote sustainable energy, and
here China is a leader with the pledge made by President
Xi at the 75th session of the United Nations General
Assembly (UNGA) last September that China would be carbon
neutral by 2060.
In that same UNGA address, President Xi called for a
“green recovery of the world economy in the post-COVID
era” and efforts to achieve sustainable development in all
countries. Given the tremendous energy needs in Africa,
there is a real opportunity to achieve a “green
revolution” through investment in renewable
energy.
China benefits from its investments in Africa in a number
of ways, one of which is through the export of excess
goods such as cement, steel, and aluminum to be used in
construction projects. There are obvious strategic
advantages to investing in trade routes, ports, pipelines
and powerplants, and Chinese leaders pledged in the
China-Africa Action Plan to “…act in the principles of
sincerity, real results, affinity and good faith, uphold
justice while pursuing shared interests, and focus on
supporting Africa's capacity-building for
internally-driven development in view of Africa's
aspiration to reduce poverty, improve people's livelihood,
attract more investment and boost export, and will
continue to increase input and scale up cooperation with
Africa.”
China is the largest single investor in the green finance
market, while Africa needs green bonds to finance
infrastructure: this is another good example of a
“win-win.” I believe that China and Africa can also learn
from one another. Indeed, I recently co-authored a book
on The Asian Aspiration that examines development lessons from East Asia for
Africa. An African-Chinese partnership can help the world
implement the UN development mission of “a blueprint to
achieve a better and more sustainable future for
all.” Africa and China should continue to work
together for this desirable objective.
Olusegun Obasanjo was President of Nigeria from 1999 to
2007. He is Co-Chair of the InterAction Council and
Chair of the African Progress Group.