Abstract
The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) is a platform established by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in collaboration with African countries for collective consultation and dialogue. Established in 2000, FOCAC ministerial summits take place every three years, alternatively in China and then Africa. The existence of FOCAC might be best seen as the institutionalization of Sino-African relations at a time of intensified interactions and following a period of exponential growth in such linkages. It is also then formalization of relationships which have been long in existence and which can trace their direct origins back over 50 years. The first Forum met in October 2000 in Beijing and was attended by nearly 80 ministers from 44 African countries. The second ministerial conference was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in December 2003 and passed the Addis Ababa Action Plan (2004–2006). The FOCAC Summit and the third ministerial conference were held in Beijing from November 2006, while FOCAC IV met in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2009. FOCAC V meets in Beijing in the last quarter of 2012 and it is in this context that this work seeks to critically evaluate the FOCAC.
Highlights
The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) is a platform established by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in collaboration with African countries for collective consultation and dialogue
The second ministerial conference was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in December 2003 and passed the Addis Ababa Action Plan (2004–2006)
The FOCAC Summit and the third ministerial conference were held in Beijing from November 2006, while FOCAC IV met in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2009
Summary
A general problem with FOCAC is the fact that China is very much in control of the whole process and it is Beijing that sets the agenda and the declarations and outcomes. Interviewing AU staff in Addis, it is clear to me at least that most AU bureaucrats have not the faintest idea when evaluating Sino-African ties, though they are appreciative of the new Chinese-built AU headquarters and the various fully-funded trips to China (with the attendant per diems) that they can accumulate. Such lack of reflexivity means that at the continental level there is an almost total lack of any coherent African voice to shape the relationships that FOCAC is supposed to engender. Even if China’s policymakers wanted to make FOCAC more “Africa-centric” (whatever that might mean), it would be difficult for Beijing policymakers to engage with any unified voice
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