05 Sep 2018

Botswana is likely to benefit from the windfall offered under the auspices of Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).

This follows the announcement by Chinese President Xi Jingping at the high-level dialogue between Chinese and African leaders in Beijing on Monday of US$60 billion support to African countries.

In an interview,  Minister of International Affairs and Cooperation, Dr Unity Dow said Botswana joined the rest of African countries for the special forum.

She said during the forum Botswana gained partnership with other countries and not only China.

“For the first time, FOCAC is a special forum that brings countries together more than 50 countries in Africa believing that they have something to share. The meeting gives African countries an opportunity to discuss not within the confines of their regional blocs such as the African Union or SADC, but as a continent,” she said.

Thus, she said there were opportunities for African countries to look at themselves as an entity with a population of about 1.2 billion joining hands together with China’s population of about 1.4 billion.

Dr Dow said Foreign Direct Investment would not be grown by Botswana’s population of two million people hence joining hands with the rest of Africa gave Botswana dynamism and multinational future.

Botswana had so far benefitted from a few grants such as the building of Kazungula Primary School and that there were possibilities of considering other projects in education, infrastructure projects such as rail and roads development because loans were available on low interest rates.

President Xi said the US$60 billion would be in the form of government assistance as well as investment and financing by financial institutions and companies.

He said this would include US$15 billion of grants, interest-free loans and concessional loans, US$20 billion of credit lines, the setting up of a US$10 billion special fund for development financing and a US$5 billion special fund for financing imports from Africa.

“We encourage Chinese companies to make at least US$10 billion of investment in Africa in the next three years.

In addition, for those of Africa’s least developed countries, heavily indebted and poor countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing countries that have diplomatic relations with China, the debt they have incurred in the form of interest-free Chinese government loans due to mature by the end of 2018 will be exempted,” he said. Ends