Everything you need to know about FOCAC: Rising Powers

We are continuing to discuss the Sixth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) for the rest of the month. FOCAC will be held in three weeks, December 4-5 in Johannesburg, South Africa. For historical context, FOCAC was initiated in 2000 in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country. This week, hosts Winslow Robertson and Ms. Lina Benabdallah connect FOCAC to the idea of rising powers: what FOCAC means to South Africa and what these summits do for China as a member of the Global South, the developing world, or whichever nomenclature one may prefer. Joining them is Dr. Sven Grimm, a political scientist who has worked on external partners’ co-operation with Africa since 1999. He is a Senior Researcher and the Coordinator of the Rising Powers program at The German Development Institute (DIE) in Bonn. Since 2006 his research has focused on emerging economies’ role in Africa, and specifically China-Africa relations. He obtained his Ph.D. from Hamburg University in 2002 with a thesis on E.U.-Africa relations. He has previously worked with the London-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and was the former head of the Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Mighty Mike

Everything you need to know about FOCAC: Security

Note: This episode was recorded live over lunch, and has considerable ambient noise which we were unable to remove.

We are continuing to discuss the Sixth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) for the rest of the month. FOCAC will be held in three weeks, December 4-5 in Johannesburg, South Africa. For historical context, FOCAC was initiated in 2000 in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country. This week, hosts Winslow Robertson and Ms. Lina Benabdallah examine China-Africa security issues with Amb. David Shinn, who was U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. He is currently an Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, and co authored China and Africa: A Century of Engagement with Prof. Joshua Eisenman, which was published in 2012 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. In addition, he recently published a non-China-Africa book: Hizmet in Africa: The Activities and Significance of the Gulen Movement.

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Mighty Mike

Everything you need to know about FOCAC: Sustainable Development

We are continuing to discuss the Sixth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) for the rest of the month. FOCAC will be held in three weeks, December 4-5 in Johannesburg, South Africa. For historical context, FOCAC was initiated in 2000 in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country. This week, hosts Winslow Robertson and Ms. Lina Benabdallah hope to discuss how how FOCAC will engage with sustainable development and have three guests from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Kenya, WWF China, and WWF South Africa respectively to explore the linkages between FOCAC and sustainable development: Jackson Kiplagat is the Interim Policy & Research Lead - Africa for WWF Kenya, Nan Li is Policy Program Manager for China's Green Shift Initiative at WWF China; and Louise Scholtz is Manager: Special Projects: Policy Futures Unit of WWF South Africa. In addition, WWF South Africa recently put up a FOCAC website that is well worth exploring.

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Mighty Mike

Everything you need to know about FOCAC: Media

South Africa is hosting the sixth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) this December. FOCAC was initiated in the year 2000 and in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country - and this time, will mark the first instance that FOCAC is held at a summit (instead of ministerial) level in an African country. To discuss FOCAC today as well as its media permutations, hosts Winslow Robertson (and Lina  Lina Benabdallah in spirit) invited Dr. Bob Wekesa on the show. Dr. Wekesa received his PhD in international communications at Communication University of China and is currently a Research Associate at University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He is a leading expert on all things relating to China-Africa media, and he actually attending the previous FOCAC in 2012, held in Beijing.

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Mighty Mike

Is Your Relationship with China Better than Mine?

By Hannah Ryder, Deputy Country Director, United Nations Development Program China

Just a few weeks ago, my sister got married. The wedding was beautiful, her husband is an absolutely wonderful man from Uganda, and my two other sisters and I were bridesmaids. But there was one problem. I found myself comparing her wedding to mine seven years ago. Either thinking “Oh, I wish we had done our flowers like that” or “I wish we had practiced our first dance a bit more”. It was when I turned to my husband to tell him yet another comparison that he reminded me of a famous phrase first coined by Mark Twain in the late 1800’s: “comparison is the death of joy”. And in so many words, he helped me curb my comparative reflection.

But comparison is an easy trap to fall in, whether you’re an individual, group, country – and even a region. Here in China last week, comparison was in the air as the first ever meeting between Chinese government leaders and Ministers of CELAC – a group of 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries formed in 2011 – got underway. The comparison was with another region – Africa.