China-Africa cooperation in agriculture continues to deepen

Published: April 22,2024

When visiting an egg production factory in PingguDistrict, Beijing’s northeastern suburb, African diplomats were amazed by the automated breeding process and quality products produced.

During an organized trip on Wednesday, 28 diplomats from over 20 African countries visited the egg factory, a food technology company, and scenic spot known as “peach blossom sea”. Modernization of agriculture and mechanization of agriculture at various levels of the value chain is quite relevant to Africa, said Willy Bett, Kenyan ambassador to China. Beijing boasts about half of Chinese academicians in agriculture, over 1,000 professional breeders, and almost 20,000 agricultural scientific and technical personnel. 

As a traditional agricultural district of Beijing, Pingguhas made full use of its regional advantages to attract technicians by establishing laboratories for academicians and researchers, offering funds for scientific and technological innovation.

Chickens nurtured in Pinggu are a great example of local products going abroad. At a chicken farm in Tanzania, workers there are nurturing chickens and white-feather broilers from Pinggu. Last summer witnessed 15,500 chickens and 1,000 white-feather broilers of Yukou Poultry being exported to Tanzania. 

To ensure the chickens could adapt to the environment of Tanzania, technicians of Yukou Poultry made field trips to Tanzania to examine the local production factors, including feeding environment, feed and vaccines before export and sent technicians to work in Tanzania to offer professional guidance. “The chickens from China can adapt to the local environment, better-resisting diseases than local chickens,” said an administrator of the farm.

During the trip, the African diplomats discussed how to promote agricultural cooperation between Chinese and African enterprises to ensure food security. A new meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) will be held in Beijing this autumn. “When you talk about the FOCAC mechanism, the cooperation between China and Africa, one of the most important topics is agricultural cooperation between China and Africa,” said Ibrahima Sory Sylla, Senegalese ambassador to China. “We have the Chinese embassy in my country that facilitated the project to grow rice. We are talking to China in terms of setting up agricultural demonstration centers in Botswana,” said Daphne Nomsa Mlotshwa, charge d’affaires of the Botswana Embassy in China. Cooperation between China and African countries in other areas was also expected, such as photovoltaic energy, she added.

Xinhua