Doing Our Best: How Can BRICS Members Help Africa?

The key way to help Africa grow even faster is to invest in the continent, Dr. Jin Xin, Secretary-General of the China Council for BRICS Think-Tank Cooperation (CCBTC), told Sputnik Africa.

For example, during last year's BRICS Plus African Countries Forum, China outlined three areas of investment: industrialization, modernization of agriculture, and capacity building. However, as the speaker noted, such fields should be discussed within BRICS.

"We can discuss within our framework what kind of fields we can invest in and what kind of fields have the most profitable and most promising future. That is one thing we need to think about," he pointed out on the sidelines of the BRICS Academic Forum 2024.

Furthermore, investment should be structured, the expert argued.

"I think it is better for major countries, if they want to invest in Africa, [to] have a coordination mechanism to ensure that they can invest in Africa orderly [...]. [...] We can discuss with our colleagues within BRICS, including Russia, China, India and Brazil, to coordinate our position and strengthen our cooperation with Africa," Jin said.

Moreover, the secretary-general emphasized that in addition to fostering cooperation within BRICS, it is important to engage in discussions on BRICS Plus Africa collaboration and research and conduct extensive research to identify areas of potential cooperation and complementarity.

"I believe helping African countries realize modernization is not only a thing China wants to do; it's also something that Russia and other BRICS partners want to do together. We can do our best to ensure that," Jin told Sputnik Africa.

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Aside from that, to improve BRICS as a whole, the head of CCBTC noted that the bloc "needs more mechanisms to ensure that the policies are implemented," meaning it should strive for better institutionalization.

"I believe there should be sub-organizations under the framework of finance, economics and trade, people to people, peace and security cooperation to ensure that the consensus of the leaders can be translated into real actions," Jin reckoned.

Does China Neocolonize Africa?

The last topic discussed was the attempts by some Western media to portray China as a new colonizer of the continent. But are these accusations valid, and why are they being spread?

The speaker argued that such media outlets try to hinder China-Africa cooperation as there are many successful projects that have been implemented between the Asian giant and the continent but only a few European ones.

"Many of the Western countries just made empty promises [to do projects in Africa] and [...] want to make fast money [...]. They cannot do it like China does cooperating with Africa. So they hype up such a narrative, and that is something we can ignore," Jin concluded.