Agriculture & Food

Ethiopia's coffee, Nigeria's peanuts, Tanzania's cashews, Côte d'Ivoire's cocoa... Africa is rich in agricultural resources. These specialty agricultural products are among the world's largest in production and play an extremely important role in the export trade of various countries. Expanding and deepening China-Africa economic and trade cooperation in agricultural products will help reduce poverty and benefit farmers in Africa, help Africa's inclusive growth and sustainable development, and will also help meet China's diversified market needs.

In 2021, the "Vision 2035 for China-Africa Cooperation" adopted at the 8th Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the "Nine Projects" initiated and implemented have pointed out the way forward for the development of China-Africa relations and pragmatic cooperation in agriculture and other fields. Injected strong power. In addition to trade cooperation, China has further deepened agricultural cooperation and accelerated the construction of a three-dimensional and diversified China-Africa agricultural cooperation pattern by carrying out agricultural technology training, building agricultural technology demonstration centers in Africa, and strengthening agricultural investment in Africa.

Full of expectations for deepening cooperation

The trade promotion project in the "Nine Projects" clearly stated that China will establish a "green channel" for African agricultural products to be exported to China, accelerate the promotion of quarantine access procedures, and further expand the zero-tariff treatment of products exported to China from the least developed countries that have established diplomatic relations with China. scope and will provide trade finance to support African exports.

China is actively expanding market access for African agricultural products. Since the beginning of this year, Rwandan stevia, South African fresh pears and Kenyan wild aquatic products have successively obtained export licenses to China.

"China has become Africa's second largest export destination of agricultural products." Cao Derong, president of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Foodstuffs, Native Produce and Animal Husbandry, introduced when he attended the African Agricultural Products Import Forum in Changsha a few days ago. 18.23%, a record.

The African Agricultural Products Import Forum is hosted by the Ministry of Commerce and the Hunan Provincial People's Government, and jointly organized by the Hunan Provincial Department of Commerce, the Food and Land Chamber of Commerce and the Foreign Trade Development Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce. At this forum, many African guests expressed their high appreciation for China-Africa agricultural cooperation and looked forward to further deepening bilateral cooperation.

China is South Africa's largest trading partner, and South Africa is also China's largest trading partner in Africa. In recent years, South African exports of agricultural products such as oranges, nuts, red wine and beef to China have grown steadily. China has opened wider to South Africa's high-quality agricultural products. In August last year and in February this year, China and South Africa signed a protocol on phytosanitary requirements for citrus and fresh pears exported to China. Xie Shengwen, Ambassador of South Africa to China, said that South Africa hopes to continuously deepen economic and trade cooperation in agricultural products with China, expand the export of high-quality agricultural products such as wine, fruit, nuts, meat, fishery products and aloe vera to China, and promote the export of products such as avocado, blueberry and honey to China .

Peanut is the most important economic crop in Senegal. Thanks to the efficient and pragmatic cooperation between China and Senegal in the field of peanuts, such as improving varieties, increasing production and training technologies, Senegal has become one of the main sources of imported peanuts to China. Senegal is advancing the road of revitalization supported by agricultural modernization. "In recent years, through cooperation with China, the output, productivity and competitiveness of Senegal's agriculture have been continuously improved, and agricultural modernization has achieved many development results." Senegal's Minister of Agriculture and Rural Equipment Moussa Barde said in a video speech. China will continue to improve the competitiveness of agricultural products and expand exports to China.

"The huge potential of Ethiopia's agricultural exports has yet to be released." Sofia Kasa, Minister of State of Ethiopia's Ministry of Agriculture, said that Ethiopia's coffee, flowers, fruits, vegetables and livestock products have the potential to meet the needs of the Chinese market, and he called on Egypt and China to strengthen development. Strategic docking to further explore agricultural cooperation opportunities.

Unleash potential, clear direction and have ideas

Since the establishment of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the scale of China's imports of agricultural products from Africa has continued to grow. According to Yu Zirong, Vice President of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, from the perspective of the proportion of African agricultural products in China's total agricultural imports and the distribution of importing countries, there is still a lot of room for expansion in China-Africa agricultural trade.

In order to fully unleash the potential of bilateral agricultural trade, Yu Zirong suggested deepening the all-round cooperation between China and Africa in the field of agriculture, determining the list of key agricultural products imported from Africa and the roadmap for the import of agricultural products, and planning specific measures for imported agricultural products; improving the level of trade facilitation and smoothing the flow of African agricultural products. Import channels; in addition to trade cooperation, promote the local processing of African agricultural products to make related products more suitable for the needs of the Chinese market.

"African countries have a large area of arable land and fertile land, and can increase the planting and supply of related agricultural products such as coffee and cashew nuts for the Chinese market." Li Hui, director of Aolan (Shanghai) Trading Co., Ltd. pointed out that in the past ten years, Tanzania has And Mozambique's sesame production has more than tripled, of which 80-90% is supplied to China. She believes that to deepen China-Africa agricultural cooperation, it is necessary to continuously improve Africa's agricultural technology level, improve crop yields through refined management, and strengthen cooperation in infrastructure fields such as ports to provide logistics support for African agricultural exports.

In addition, giving full play to the advantages of e-commerce can also help the development of China-Africa agricultural trade. Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia, China and Africa have effectively promoted the growth of bilateral trade against the trend through new trade channels such as e-commerce. For example, the national pavilion opened by JD.com solved the problems of weak presence of overseas products in the Chinese consumer market and limited resources to support the establishment of a separate store by creating a national business card, and opened a sales channel for African and other overseas featured products to enter the Chinese market. Fan Lei, vice president of JD.com Group, said that JD.com hopes to introduce more and better African products into China by opening more pavilions in African countries.