Conference offers solutions to Africa

The 2021 Africa-China Poverty Reduction and Development Conference was held online on Tuesday to discuss policies and practices related to poverty reduction and rural development amid challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Liu Huanxin, head of the National Administration for Rural Vitalization, said China's achievements in poverty reduction had promoted the global process of poverty alleviation and had contributed planning and wisdom to rural development around the world.

The conference was an important platform for sharing experiences and making greater progress in China-Africa cooperation, Liu said.

Zhao Baogang, a senior official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' African affairs department, said China has been sharing agricultural experiences and technology with African countries. The country has helped to build 23 agricultural demonstration bases in Africa and trained nearly 10,000 people.

"Grain yields of many projects in countries such as Ghana and Mozambique have quickly increased thanks to support from China," Zhao said. He added that hundreds of Chinese agricultural processing companies have provided job opportunities for African farmers and helped them shake off poverty.

China will ramp up efforts to help African countries explore poverty reduction methods according to their own conditions, conveners of the meeting said.

Liu Yu, deputy director of the Commerce Ministry's department of western Asian and African affairs, said China will share its experiences with African countries, "based on our respect for their willingness", through courses for postgraduate students.

Carlos Watson, representative of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in China, said the country's experience in poverty alleviation and agricultural development "is a vault filled with a vast number of proven solutions that China has developed and applied to achieve its own remarkable development results".

"I am sure China's experiences are valuable assets to be shared with the rest of the developing world," he said.

China supported the FAO's South-South Cooperation Programme by committing $130 million from 2009 to last year, including the most recent $50 million of support announced in September last year.

Around 450 practical agricultural technologies have been transferred and over 1,000 experts have been dispatched to host countries of the program, according to the FAO.

Fan Shenggen, a professor from China Agricultural University, said during the conference that sustainable intensification, which maximizes yields without harming the environment or the need to convert additional land into cropland, is the only solution to feed Africans.

"Agricultural growth in Africa has been driven mainly by area expansion rather than productivity increases," he said.

He suggested that technologies should focus not only on increasing yields and productivity, but also on achieving multiple benefits via climate adaptation, microdosing of fertilizer, and gene editing.

China will set up a number of China-Africa centers for the exchange, demonstration and training of modern agricultural technology, he added.

In response to African countries' interests in China's poverty reduction experience, the International Poverty Reduction Center in China launched the conference in 2010. It held 10 meetings in China and five in African countries by 2019, before the pandemic broke out, and resumed online this year.