How significant is China-Africa trade relations?

Africa with its rich soils is still wanting in the development of the horticulture sector. Uganda in particular is still below in the transformation of this industry. Horticulture is socially important because it improves how we use plants for food and other human purposes as well as repairing environmental and personal aesthetics.

The horticulture sector if prioritised and thoroughly transformed can create immense wealth for nations at local and national levels, job opportunities for the local citizenry as well as effective control or complete elimination of massive environmental degradation as witnessed in some countries, including Uganda. The big Satan of cutting down trees with impunity, encroaching on wetlands for human settlement, etc, can adequately be addressed with the execution of the horticulture strategy for national development. Horticulture also is a proven contributor to organised tourism sites for nations as well as a reliable source of raw materials for agro-based industries for sustainable industralisation.

Africa needs to preserve, protect, uphold and transform its environment for sustainable development. A multiple use of our environments to transform our livelihoods rather than to destroy them completely for human survival should be our newest approach to good environmental management in Africa. China, the Netherlands and other countries are practicing this approach already. Africa, therefore, should copy and develop these new approaches to sustainable environmental management using horticulture as a continental strategy. The African Union should legislate and jump-start this horticulture strategy for all African countries to domesticate for sustainable development.

The Beijing exhibition should be a learning theatre for Africa to:
l Observe, learn, copy and develop systems, best practices and policies that will lead to sustainable use of our rich environments for socio-economic development.

l Fast-track what is commonly needed in the huge Chinese market of more than a billion people and other proximate markets, and position our countries to produce for export designed to satisfy these markets using our rich soils as our competitive advantage, in exchange for the complex Chinese technologies we lack in the name of improving Africa’s balance of trade with China.

l Continue to encourage China to invest heavily in Africa as a wealth producer rather than a strategic consumer. That is to say, China should freely trade with Africa rather than aid or favour African countries in all its undertakings.

l Africans should continue to infiltrate China for all its greater opportunities, learn the Chinese language, peoples and all their socio- economic dimensions, and develop strategic partnerships designed to inspire, enhance and deepen trade for sustainable development.

l African counties should make it possible for their citizenry to relate freely with China through high level diplomatic relations as well as well negotiated bilateral agreements that propel effective trade to flourish without fear or compromise of the hard hitting Chinese legal muscle.
l China should also open up fully for Africa and her peoples in all strategic endeavours to speed up aggregate economic growth and development at all levels in African countries.
Let’s connect the world!

Mr Mukedi is a development consultant
and a senior public management scientist.
[email protected]