The African Union (AU) Commissioner for Trade and Industry, Mrs. Elisabeth Tankeu, on Tuesday, in Addis Ababa, said Africa was set to review its partnership with traditional partners.

   Tankeu, who made the assertion at the opening of the China-Africa Economic Relations (CAER) conference, said this had become imperative to enable the continent play its rightful role in the global economy.

  She said the continent would diversify its partnership base to forge stronger friendship among the emerging powers of the South. “Being developing countries like African countries, partnerships with the emerging powers of the South would provide opportunities for the sharing of development experiences,” she said.

Tankeu said that among the objectives of the AU constitution was the achievement of rapid and sustainable economic growth and development in Africa.

“The organisation is expected to address the multifaceted challenges that confront it in the world economy and to establish the necessary conditions that will enable the continent to play its rightful role in the global economy”.

“A key element in the strategy of the AU for meeting the challenges of globalisation and achieving rapid economic growth in Africa is the South-South co-operation and the development and the strengthening of partnerships with the emerging powers of the South,” she said.

Tankeu said China was of particular significance to Africa because of the rapid economic growth of Chinese economy in recent years and her leadership drive in fundamentally reshaping of the global economic power structure.

“She said that the partnership should be human centered and that the focus should be joint development based on true and equal partnership. It should similarly be based on mutual trust and benefits, not that of donors and recipients”.

“The priorities of Africa in this context of partnership will be on acceleration of industrialisation, infrastructure development, agricultural development, technology and education development and acquisition, human capital development, enhancement of market access and development of modern service,” Tankeu said.

She said that China’s Africa policy  China-Africa Dialogue and had committed itself to being a strong development partner of Africa through, the write off of debts owed it by Africa’s least developed countries, the grant of free import duty and the development of resources for the accelerated development of Africa.

Tankeu said that the review of China-Africa partnership would be on the agenda of the next session of AU ministers of Trade, scheduled for Kigali, Rwanda next month.

Prof. William Lyakurwa, the executive director of African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), in his remarks said the conference was important to many African countries because of the magnitude of China’s growing presence in Africa through trade, investment and aid.

Lyakurwa said the increase in China’s economic and political involvement in Africa was the most momentous development on the continent.

He said that there was a need for empirical research on the opportunities and challenges for African economies to reflect the deepening relations.