Sakai photovoltaic power plant in the Central African Republic. (PHOTO: XINHUA)

By WANG Xiaoxia

Good progress has been made through China-Africa cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as the improving infrastructure and clean energy cooperation are bringing tangible benefits to Africa.

Since the founding of Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), Chinese companies have helped African countries build and upgrade more than 10,000 km of railways, nearly 100,000 km of roads, nearly 1,000 bridges and 100 ports. With 66,000 km of power transmission lines and 150,000 km of communication backbone cables built by Chinese companies, network services now cover nearly 700 million user terminals in Africa.

Thanks to economic and trade growth through speeding up infrastructure construction, Africa can better participate in global industrial cooperation.

Despite the global COVID-19 pandemic, China and Africa witnessed closer economic cooperation and increasing trade under the BRI. In 2021, China-Africa trade exceeded 250 billion USD, up 35.3 percent year on year, according to statistics from Chinese Ministry of Commerce. 

Under the BRI, China and Africa are pursuing sustainable development through clean energy cooperation.

In recent years, many major green energy projects were established in Africa, with China's technological support. The Kaleta hydropower station, designed and built by China Three Gorges Corp., has turned Guinea, the water tower of West Africa, into a veritable power tower, and injected a strong impetus into the economic development of Guinea and even West Africa.

This June, Sakai photovoltaic power plant in the Central African Republic, a Chinese aided project, began to supply power to the capital city Bangui, and has developed local communities and the economy while easing power shortages.