What to expect from the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Summit

China's President Xi Jinping will open the ninth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Summit on Thursday, where he is expected to urge African leaders gathered in Beijing to absorb more Chinese goods in exchange for pledges of loans and investment.

The three-yearly forum officially kicks off today with a welcome dinner for the 50 African nations in attendance and will close on Friday, after negotiations over cooperation documents setting the course of China-Africa relations up until 2027.

China approved loans worth $4.61 billion to Africa last year, the first annual increase since 2016.

What is China's pitch?

The world's biggest bilateral lender wants to slim down its investment portfolio and re-align its relations with developing economies around Xi's new mantra of "small and beautiful projects," instead of big-ticket infrastructure.

Infrastructure appeared only once in Xi's address to the last summit in Dakar in 2021, where he pledged to support 10 projects to improve the interconnectivity of African states.

On Thursday, analysts anticipate the Chinese leader to talk up the competitiveness of its green technologies, which the U.S. and Europe maintain it has overcapacity in, and Beijing needs to find buyers for, as well as technology transfer schemes and more people-to-people exchanges.

China could also pledge to increase the amount available to African central banks and businesses through credit lines, after committing $10 billion dollars at the last summit, in addition to support in developing digital finance and e-payment systems.

What do the African delegates want?

African leaders will be looking for quicker financing solutions to a growing debt crisis across the continent in the Beijing Action Plan of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation for 2025-2027, as well as fresh job-creating investment pledges and assurances projects proposed in Dakar will be completed.

South Africa's president on Monday told Xi he wanted to narrow his country's trade deficit with China, an aspiration almost all African states share, which leaders will be hoping Beijing responds to with better terms for their agricultural and natural resources exports.

Delegates will also be looking for assurance that a pledge from the 2021 summit that China would buy $300 billion worth of African goods will be met.

Analysts say Beijing's phytosanitary market access barriers are too strict, preventing African food exporters from selling into the 1.4 billion-strong consumer market.

Over the course of the week, African leaders have also been meeting Chinese firms to encourage them to set up manufacturing hubs in their countries, to help move their industrial sectors up the value chain.

China's President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan stand for a group photo together with leaders from African countries before a welcome dinner of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, September 4, 2024. (Photo: ANDRES MARTINEZ CASARES/Pool via REUTERS)

What happens in Beijing?

On Tuesday, China's foreign and commerce ministers met with delegates at Beijing's Diaoyutai State Guesthouse to begin discussions over two documents: the action plan for 2024-2027 and a report on the implementations of the last summit in Dakar.

The two documents will be finalised and signed off by all delegates by the end of the summit.

African and Chinese negotiating teams have been meeting at least twice a year since the last forum, but the in-person meeting presents presidents with a chance to personally involve themselves in the negotiations.

A procession of presidents has passed through Beijing's Great Hall of the People in the days leading up to the summit, with Xi having already met more than 20 heads of state, according to Chinese state media.

This year's forum is the first in-person summit since COVID, with the Dakar meeting taking place largely online, and Chinese and African leaders alike are using the gathering to hold various bilateral meetings.