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Draft Concept Note

Africa's Engagement of China and Other Partners to Achieve SDGs and Agenda 2063

Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue Forum Organized by – Oxfam International, Africa-China Dialogue Platform

Suggested Date: Wednesday, 28 September 2016, Sheraton Hotel, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Background Note

The African continent has demonstrated impressive growth rates over the last ten years. Africa is, thus, increasingly referred to as the “rising star” or the “emerging continent”. Indeed six of the world’s 10 fastest growing countries in the 2000s were in Sub-Saharan Africa. These are Angola at 11.1 % a year, Nigeria 8.9 %, Ethiopia 8.4 %, Chad 7.9 %, Mozambique 7.9 %, and Rwanda 7.6 %. There are also others that were above or near 7% growth needed to double their economies in 10 years. This is in sharp contrast to fifteen years ago when the front cover of the Economist magazine asserted Africa as “the hopeless continent.” Notwithstanding, the aforementioned economic growth in Africa, challenges abound to economic development in Africa in the 21st century. Even though Africa is able to register economic growth for the past so many years, many countries in Africa are unable to sustain high levels of long-term economic growth to reach the 7% threshold required to significantly improve populations’ incomes on the continent. The growth in the continent is also criticized as just growth without prosperity. There are also challenges to ensure improvements in economic and social conditions for marginalized groups such as the rural folks, women, the youth, and the disabled. In comparison with other regions, Africa lags behind in all indicators of social development. Currently, half of the population of Africa - 48% - is living in absolute poverty and if the trend is not reversed, the number of people that are living in absolute poverty will increase significantly in the future. There has also been insufficient progress towards meeting international food security targets: at present more than one in four people remain undernourished in Africa – the highest prevalence of any region in the world.1

1 See FAO, IFAD, WFP. 2014. The State of Food insecurity in the world: Strengthening the Enabling

Environment for Food Security and Nutrition. Rome: FAO

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Many African economies have also been transforming, albeit not at a pace fast enough to address unemployment, especially among the youth. For instance, an extra 450 million jobs must be created in the next two decades in the continent in order to match expansion in the number of working-age people in the region.2 The challenge, thus, remains to ensure that the sources of growth are diversified through industrialization, value-addition, and structural transformation. Moreover, the African economy remains not bereft of challenges from external shocks such as the commodity price shocks, tighter global monetary policies, and slowdown in the global economy and domestic risks such as weather-related shocks. Slow growth, high and rising unemployment, and increasing poverty are the triple problems facing African countries. Moreover, the continent except few countries did not meet most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. The progress towards achieving MDGs for nearly every goal has been off the track and falling back in some areas, where there was progress it has been too slow to achieve MDGs. Sub-Saharan African countries being the worse than any other similar countries in other continents. In spite of that, as noted above continent has achieved impressive economic growth in the past decades. In the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)3 that the international community has taken on an even more ambitious agenda will address the unfinished work of the previous MDGs and more. But the questions still remain: what Africa must to do to achieve the more ambitious development goals (SDGs) and Agenda 20634 than what Africa couldn’t do to achieve the MDGs in the past 15 years? This issue matters most to Oxfam as it is working on to reduce poverty, hunger, inequality, and promote the right to be heard, sustainable food, fair sharing of resources and advancing gender justice through policy research and analysis, advocacy and policy promotion. This emanates from the determination to help achieve change by unlocking the great potential in this world to overcome new threats and achieve sustainable human development. Africa to achieve these ambitious goals, investment and development assistance in the implementation of SDGs and Agenda 2063 is required. This can be Africa’s greatest hope of transformation from desperation to growth and prosperity, by ending extreme poverty in all its forms everywhere by 2030, and achieve a prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development in 2063. As the SDGs were just adopted recently, which has many interfaces with Agenda 2063; Africa-China Dialogue Platform (ACDP) believes this is the best time to do a research on this issue. This, in particular, is true as the continent witnessed a

2 See Bax, Pauline. 2015. “From Burkina Faso to Burundi, Jobless Young Africans Rise against

Corrupt and Failed Rule.” Available at http://fahamu.org/1865 p.1

3 Sustainable Development Goals or Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs) are goals world

leaders adopted at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit on 25 September 2015. For

more information see http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/# 4 Details on Agenda 2063 please do see http://agenda2063.au.int/en/documents/agenda-2063-africa-

we-want-popular-version-final-edition

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growing relationship not only with traditional partners but also with emerging economies such as China, Brazil, Russia, Turkey, and India. In particular, the relationship with emerging economies witnessed growth both at political and economic levels. More specifically, the relationship promoted at three important levels namely, trade, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and development assistance. For instance, the trade volume between Africa and China was $1 billion in 1980, $ 11 billion in 2000 and surged to $ 225 billion in 2013, which is twice that of Africa-US trade. At the moment China is the largest trading partner to the continent for five successive years. Chinese FDI is also increasing from time to time in Africa. Official China White Paper indicated cumulative FDI in Africa at the end of 2012 totalled $22 billion. The recent, the 6th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in December 2015, held in Johannesburg, South Africa, unveiled that China’s investment in Africa increased to $ 32.35 billion in 2015 with over 3000 Chinese companies operating across the continent. Chinese development assistance to Africa as well is another important feature of Africa-China cooperation. China has been providing development assistance in different sectors of the African economy. The most notable ones are infrastructure, telecommunication, energy generation and supply, manufacturing, and industry as well as the agriculture sectors. In this regard, China provided $ 14.4 billion of development assistance, half of which was provided to 51 African countries through more than 2,500 development projects, with a total of approximately $ 7.5 billion. Moreover, in the recent FOCAC, noted above, China pledged to give $60 billion to a development fund (in various kind of support) to African countries i.e., loans, preferential loans, export credits, concessional foreign aid loans ($35 billion); China-Africa Development Fund, (CAD Fund for equity investment, $5 billion); small and medium enterprise (SME) credit line ($5 billion); grants and zero interest loans ($5 billion); and a new China-Africa Cooperation Fund with $10 billion to African countries. The trends in the past six FOCAC since 2000 reflect huge financial commitments from China to Africa. Furthermore, China provided $ 3 billion to South-South Climate Change Cooperation Fund and an additional $ 2 billion to aid developing countries to implement Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Rationale and Objectives of the Proposed Dialogue Forum

The Africa-China Dialogue Platform (ACDP) aims to encourage and facilitate a constructive engagement and dialogue of citizens, policy makers, researchers and other stakeholders on the growing partnership between Africa and China. The platform seeks to generate knowledge in order to influence policies and practices that relate to the Africa–China partnership. We are involved specific streams of work including policy research, knowledge generation, management, and dissemination. The short-term focus areas of the platform are agricultural cooperation, climate change, sustainable development goals (SDGs) and peace and security. The platform while looking at the continent, in general, it will have a focus on countries from the five sub-regions that have the most Chinese involvement.

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It is in this context, the Africa-China Dialogue Platform Programme will hold the first multi-stakeholder dialogue forum, under the theme "Africa's engagement of China and other Partners to achieve SDGs and Agenda 2063". The forum will focus on Africa’s strategy to make good use of the opportunities arise from Africa-China/other development partners’ cooperation in particular from development financing perspectives in climate change, south-south cooperation fund, FDI etc to promote sustainable development under the framework of SDGs and Agenda 2063. The Specific objectives are to:

Unveil the experience in Millennium Development Goals as a background.

Unpack the reasons why China and other development partners and investors becoming more involved in African countries.

Outlines and analysis the development assistance and investments desirable for African countries to achieve SDGs and Agenda 2063.

Unveil the opportunities and challenges in engaging China and other development partners to achieve SDGs and Agenda 2063.

Provide a thorough comparative analysis on how African countries engage China and other development partners and investors (traditional and emerging) in achieving SDGs and Agenda 2063.

Proffer policy recommendations for the major actors involved in the research.

Expected Outcomes of the Dialogue Forum:

(1) Participants have an informed understanding of the above issues.

(2) A network on Africa's engagement of China and other Partners to achieve SDGs and Agenda 2063 will be built.

(3) Learn how African governments, China, and other partners as well as other

international actors, need to do and commit more to achieve SDGs and Agenda 2063.

Approach of the Dialogue

The essence of policy dialogue is to promote informed debate and dialogue by leading policy makers, scholars and civil society actors on the various dimensions of Africa-China relationship.

The approach to the policy dialogue would be to allow free exchange of ideas and information, and individuals invited will speak in their personal capacity, rather than on institutional basis. A Chatham House Rule will be engaged i.e., participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), or that of any other participant, may be revealed. The essence is to free such individuals from institutional encumbrances and censorship, and allow frank and honest discussion to take place.

The policy dialogue is expected to benefit the general public, and the policy and academia. The objectives are to increase public awareness, shape and influence public discussion, provide feedback mechanisms on different policy initiatives, best practices, lessons learnt, challenges, and ultimately to improve the understanding of policy makers on the strategic policy choices that they have on particular issue of Africa-China partnership.

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Participants

Approximately 100 participants working on the thematic focus areas will be invited. Various stakeholders including policy makers, ambassadors, think tanks, relevant civil societies, UN agencies and other partners will be invited to join the event. Media representation is required to disseminate the outcomes of the dialogue.

Proposed Schedule

The forum will be a full-day gathering.

Date and venue

The forum will take place at Sheraton Addis Hotel on 28 September 2016, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

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A multi-stakeholder dialogue forum on the theme "Africa's engagement of China and other Partners to achieve SDGs and Agenda 2063"

Dialogue Forum I (09:00-17:30)

08:30 – 09:00 Registration

Opening Ceremony

09:00 – 10:00

Welcome and Introduction to the programme

Chair: Oxfam International Liaison Office to the African Union

2 speakers:

Chinese Ambassador to the African Union

Zambian Ambassador to the AUC and Ethiopia

10:00 – 10:15 Coffee Break

Session I

10:15 – 11:30

Unpacking convergence and divergence between SDGs and Agenda 2063

Moderator: TBA

3 speakers- (15 mins each)

Bartholomew Armah, Macroeconomic Policy Division, UNECA, Chief of Development Planning Section

Alessandra Casazza, United Nations Development Programme, Regional Service Centre for Africa, SDG Advisor,

AUC, Agenda 2063, Division/ Section

Q & A (30 mins)

Session II

11:30 – 13:00

How African Countries Effectively Engage China to Achieve SGDs/Agenda 2063: Opportunities and Challenges

Moderator: TBA

3 speakers- (15 mins each)

Chris Alden, Research Associate, South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA)

Ye Yu, Senior Fellow, Institute for World Economy Studies, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS).

AUC, China Desk

Q & A (30 mins)

13:00 -14:00 Lunch

Session III Africa's engagement with traditional and emerging Partners to achieve

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14:00 – 15:30 SDGs and Agenda 2063: Opportunities and Challenges

Moderator: TBA

3 speakers-Tentative (15 mins each)

Sanusha Naidu, a foreign policy analyst and Africa’s relations with Emerging Powers from the South (BRICS and IBSA)

Speaker from EU

Speaker from Japan /USAID/

Q & A (30 mins)

15:30 – 15:45 Coffee Break

Afternoon II

15:45-17:30

Open discussion and way forward

Moderator: TBA

3 speakers-Tentative (15 mins each)

Bob Wekesa, Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, Steering Committee, Chinese in Africa, Africans in China Research Network

Qiyuan XU, Head of Economic Development Department, The Institute of World Economics and Politics

Alebel Bayru, Researcher, Poverty and Sectoral Directorate, Ethiopian Development Research Institute (EDRI)

Mr. Gao Lei, vice chair of the Chinese Chamber in Ethiopia, and the General Manager of CGCOC group

Q & A (30 mins)

17:30 End of Programme