Recovery Through Collaboration

Closer China-Africa cooperation can minimize the impact of pandemic on Africa.

- Hu Biliang

Although the number of confirmed COVID-19 patients in Africa is not large and accounts for only a small proportion of confirmed cases in the world so far, the pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to the African economy and the negative impact is likely to continue for a period of time and even exacerbate. Therefore, effective measures need to be taken to alleviate the impact of the pandemic on the African economy as soon as possible. Strengthening China-Africa cooperation should be one of the measures.

Massive disruption

The pandemic has handed a fatal blow to exports. The economic growth of African countries is primarily driven by exports of resource products, such as crude oil, mineral resources and primary agricultural products. Therefore, African countries have a heavy reliance on foreign trade. However, due to the impact of the pandemic, global demand for resource products from Africa has reduced sharply. Therefore, this is the hardest time for the African economy.

What’s more, foreign investment in Africa has declined sharply. Owing to the disruptions caused by the pandemic to the global industrial chain, productions of enterprises have stopped or partially stopped. As a result, foreign investment has to stop. For a certain period of time, foreign investment will plunge worldwide, including in Africa.