The President of the ECOWAS Commission, H.E. Dr Omar Alieu Touray leads the ECOWAS Commission’s Delegation to the 2024 Summit of the Forum of China-Africa Cooperation (9th FOCAC) taking place in Beijing from 2nd to 6th September 2024. Accompanied by the Commissioner for Infrastructure, Energy and Digitalisation, Mr Sédiko Douka, the Director of External Relations, Mr Jerome Boa, the President of the Commission is attending the 9th Ministerial Conference of FOCAC, which took place today, 3rd September.
The Ministerial session reviewed the level of implementation of the nice priority areas in the 2021 FOCAC Action Plan and endorsed a draft Beijing Declaration and a new Action Plan. Ministers from almost all African countries attended the Ministerial session alongside their Chinese counterparts and several African leaders, including President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, President of Nigeria and Chair of ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government, have arrived in Beijing to address the Summit. The Summit is expected to focus on China Africa cooperation in various areas including Governance, Industrialization, Peace and Security as well as Infrastructure Development.
The 2024 Summit of the FOCAC is coming after a six-year hiatus caused by the Covid-19 Pandemic and three years after the 8th FOCAC ministerial conference held in Dakar, Senegal in November 2021. FOCAC was set up for equal consultation, enhancing understanding, expanding consensus, strengthening friendship and promoting cooperation between Africa and China. The first ministerial conference of FOCAC was held in Beijing in October 2000 and set to hold every three years (attended by foreign ministers and ministers in charge of international economic cooperation).
Since 2002, FOCAC set up an operational 3-level follow-up mechanisms (Senior Officials, African Diplomatic Corps, Secretariat of the Chinese Follow-up Committee) for regular evaluations and follow-up of decisions. In view of the needs of expanding China-Africa relations, China and Africa upgraded both the 3rd Ministerial Conference of FOCAC (November 2006 in Beijing), and the 6th Ministerial Conference (December 2015 in Johannesburg) to FOCAC Summits. Then followed by the 2018 FOCAC Summit in Beijing
Within the framework of FOCAC, various sub-forums have been established: China-Africa People’s Forum, China-Africa Young Leaders Forum, Ministerial Forum on China-Africa Health Cooperation, Forum on China-Africa Media Cooperation, China-Africa Poverty Reduction and Development Conference, FOCAC-Legal Forum, Forum on China-Africa Local Government Cooperation, and China-Africa Think Tanks Forum, etc.
At the end of the 2024 Summit, two outcome documents are expected to be adopted, namely a Declaration and an Action Plan for implementing high-quality China-Africa cooperation in the next three years.
