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Zero-tariff policy promotes win-win agricultural cooperation between China and Africa

12-12

Recently, China has officially granted 100% tariff-free treatment to products from all its established least developed countries, including 33 African countries. This will not only facilitate the flow of high-quality African agricultural products from African farms to Chinese tables, but also further drive industrial development in Africa and promote poverty reduction. However, it should be noted that this policy is not a unilateral aid policy for Africa, but a win-win cooperation between China and Africa.

For many African countries, agriculture is the foundation of the national economy, and agricultural transformation and upgrading is an effective way to alleviate poverty. Over the past few decades, numerous empirical studies have shown that economic growth in the agricultural sector is a major contributor to increased incomes for the poor, and its effect on poverty reduction is more than double that of growth in any other sector. The African continent, especially sub-Saharan Africa, remains predominantly agricultural. In most countries, agriculture accounts for more than 30% of GDP, and agricultural employment accounts for more than 70% of total employment. Moreover, the majority of the population lives in rural areas, making agriculture the lifeblood of these countries' socio-economic systems. However, Africa's poverty is closely related to the low efficiency and limited added value of its agriculture.

Increasing imports of agricultural products from Africa is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of China-Africa agricultural cooperation. In recent years, under the frameworks of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, China and Africa have continuously deepened agricultural technological cooperation. China has established 24 agricultural technology demonstration centers in Africa, promoting more than 300 advanced and applicable technologies, such as dense corn planting, leading to an average increase in crop yields of 30% to 60% in related regions, significantly improving the level of agricultural development in African countries and benefiting more than one million smallholder farmers. “China has played an important role in the modernization of African agriculture.” Rahman Tala Osman, the resident representative of the African Union Mission to China, said that China's technological advantages and policy expertise provide African countries with easy-to-understand and easy-to-learn experiences, promoting the sustainable development of African agricultural production while increasing farmers' income.

Furthermore, China-Africa agricultural cooperation is not limited to production and import links, but also includes extensive cooperation between the two sides in agriculture, services, and other sectors throughout the entire process. Currently, a large number of Chinese companies have achieved "going global" through this, finding new "blue oceans" for development. China's labor-intensive, intensive farming techniques provide a reference for Africa to overcome capital constraints and technological bottlenecks. Meanwhile, manual and semi-manual agricultural machinery and tools, once widely used in China, also have good market prospects in Africa. I know an Ethiopian deputy minister who, although not in charge of agriculture, specially showed me a video of a Chinese mini-tractor operating on his phone, excitedly saying that this is what Ethiopia needs and hoping I could help find the model and contact the supplier for import. The vast demand generated by the transformation and upgrading of African agriculture can be a direction for Chinese companies to consider.

China-Africa agricultural cooperation is still in a stage of transformation and upgrading, and both sides have broad space for mutually beneficial cooperation. Many agricultural products exported from Africa have mainly been exported as raw materials for many years, resulting in very limited added value and profit. For example, Ghana is the world's second-largest exporter of cocoa, but the world's well-known chocolate brands mostly come from Western countries such as Belgium, Switzerland, and the United States. China has already launched cooperation projects such as "One Country, One Product: Global Action for Green Development of Specialty Agricultural Products" in African countries in cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. This is expected to create "African products" with higher added value through bilateral and multilateral cooperation. Accordingly, the demand for exhibitions, advertising services, and food processing generated by the project will also provide further opportunities for cooperation and business improvement for Chinese companies in Africa.

The vigorous development of China-Africa agricultural cooperation in recent years has brought huge poverty reduction effects to the local area. The mutually beneficial, complementary, win-win, and even multi-win agricultural cooperation model between China and Africa, driven by technological innovation and cooperation, has become a vivid practice and successful case of China fulfilling its responsibilities as a major country, contributing to global poverty reduction efforts, and narrowing the global development gap. Now, the huge potential and benefits of China-Africa agricultural cooperation have not yet been fully unleashed. As cooperation between the two sides deepens in the future, agricultural transformation and upgrading is expected to become a new highlight benefiting African countries and a solid foundation for building a China-Africa community with a shared future. (Article reprinted from Global Times, Author: Zhu Ming, Director of the Regional Cooperation Office of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, Visiting Researcher at the Center for African Chinese Studies, University of Johannesburg, South Africa)

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