New measures to be rolled out for Africa cooperation

China will put forward new measures to strengthen the pragmatic partnership with Africa at the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation to be held next month, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Wednesday.

President Xi Jinping will announce the new measures at the summit while putting forward new proposals to promote ties with the continent, Wang said at a news conference in Beijing.

The summit is expected to adopt a Beijing Declaration on building even stronger ties between China and Africa with a shared future. It will also feature a three-year action plan between 2019 and 2021, he added.

Themed "China and Africa: Toward an Even Stronger Community with a Shared Future Through Win-Win Cooperation," the summit will open on Sept 3 with a grand ceremony, with Xi to deliver the keynote speech.

The following day, Xi and his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa, will preside over two separate panel discussions during the Chinese-African leaders' roundtable meeting.

The summit will be the largest-scale diplomatic event hosted by China and attended by the largest number of foreign leaders so far this year, Wang said.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as well as representatives of 27 international and regional organizations will be present at the summit.

Xi will hold a series of bilateral meetings with African leaders on the sidelines of the summit.

The summit is being held to comprehensively deepen friendly China-Africa cooperation and actively deal with global challenges, Wang said.

China is eagerly anticipating the summit and aims to align the Belt and Road Initiative with the African Union's Agenda 2063 and the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as well as the development strategies of African countries to inject fresh impetus for the continent's development, he said.

The summit will map out plans for priority sectors of cooperation between China and Africa in the coming three years and beyond, strengthening Africa's capability to develop independently, leveraging China's strengths with Africa's endowments and stepping up industrialization and modernization of the continent, Wang said.

The summit will also work out people-centered cooperation measures, encouraging more Chinese and Africans to be involved in exchanges to build closer people-to-people bonds, he said.

Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong said at the news conference that Gambia, Burkina Faso and the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe will attend the summit for the first time. "We hope all African countries will join the family of China-Africa cooperation," he added.

Swaziland is the only African country that has yet to establish diplomatic ties with China.