Belt & Road Initiative supports unification of Africa: scholar

This year’s Belt and Road Forum is being closely watched by African scholars, with a researcher from Zimbabwe suggesting the program is helping promote the unification of Africa.

Phyllis Johnson, founding director of the Southern African Research and Documentation Center (SARDC), says the Belt and Road Initiative contributes to Africa’s drive for integration.

“I think working together with China, in a broader term, it helps to support the unification of Africa. Because it helps to support the initiatives that continent is doing. Africa is hoping to become an emerging economy, to work together on economic issues, political issues and global issues. So there are initiatives such as the Free Trade Area. So I think it supports and strengthens the initiatives that are being taken on the continent,” says Johnson.

The senior researcher says President Xi Jinping, in his keynote to the opening of the Belt and Road Forum, proposed concrete actions to be taken for common development under the BRI mechanism.

She says she believes African countries will benefit a lot from those actions.

“President Xi’s speech at the Second Belt and Road Forum was very relevant to the rest of the world and particularly to Africa. He spoke of innovation. He spoke about green investment. He spoke of transparency, and combating corruption. Those are the issues we are dealing with here in Africa. He spoke of free trade. It will work only with good and appropriate infrastructure and China has already begun helping African countries with infrastructure,” says Johnson.

Phyllis Johnson also suggests African countries also need to actively participating in the BRI to better tap its potential.

“I can tell you a story of addressing students at the early days of the Belt and Road Initiative. And talking about and showing maps about how the maritime Silk Road coming from this part of China comes here. And it shows where the trade was at the African coast. And one the questions from the students were, ‘Why they haven’t done anything in Africa?’ And I said, ‘Because it’s up to you to do something in Africa.’ This is an initiative of reaching out. And in order to develop this part of the Silk Road that meets the Silk Road, it’s up to us. It’s up to Africa to do that,” says Johnson.

Phyllis Johnson says the BRI is still new and is developing.

As such, she says her research institutions such as the SARDC have a responsibility to hold more seminars and discussions about the BRI to help people better understand it and embrace it.