On May 16-17, The 42nd Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) will be held in Shanghai, east China, making China the second country following Spain in 2001 to hold the annual meeting of AfDB. As an important banking institution on the African continent, it has contributed tremendously for the economic growth and integration of the region. Since its entry to AfDB in 1985, China has maintained its growing, close ties with the bank. The imminent annual meeting in Shanghai indicates the high attention the African nations have attached to Africa-China cooperation.

African was once regarded as a "marginalized" continent in the course of the economic globalization. In recent years, however, the African economy has attainted the development to a certain extent over recent years and a trend toward "marginization" has been curbed via the enhanced effort of African countries.

First of all, the weight of Africa has somewhat incremented on the global economic arena. Its gross economic output accounted for 3.4 percent of the global total in 2006 and, if the annual GDP growth rate reaches 4.6 percent, exceeding the average global level, in a six-year period from 2000 to 2006 is taken into account, it contributing rate to the global economic growth rate would be even much higher, according to the World Economic Outlook released by International Monetary Fund (IMF) in April this year. The foreign direct investment (FDI) of Africa rose at an annual rate of 26.5 percent between 2000 and 2006, from 17.2 billion US dollars in 2004 to 38.8 billion dollars in 2006, making up 10.6 percent of the total FDI absorbed by the developing nations globally.

Second, the economic growth structure of the African nations has been optimized gradually. These nations, rich in mineral resources, have adjusted their mining development strategy, stepped up their mining legislation, and formulated measures for their short and medium-term development of minerals mining with equal emphases to be placed on abiding by environmental protection and spurring the regional economic development. Of the all resources developing industries, oil industry is particularly noteworthy, and the petroleum industry of Chad, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea and Mauritania has been expanding by leaps and bounds.

In the meantime, the newly-emerging telecommunications industries are also pressing ahead in African nations in a hope that they would narrow their differences with the rest of the world through the development of their telecommunications industries. A case in point is the rapid growth of the Internet and mobile phone technologies on the African continent. According to relevant statistics of the International Telecommunications Union (or ITU), only three nations in Africa, namely, South Africa, Egypt and Tunisia had access to the Internet in the early 1990s but, by the end of 1990s, 50 African nations had access to the Internet and, the popularization rate of mobile phones was only 0.06 percent in the mid 1990s, and proceeded to uplift it to 9.1 percent in 2004, thus making Africa the first continent to have were more mobile phone subscribers than the fixed phone users.

Third, African nations lay equal stress on the self-development and international coordination with regard to their development strategy. To put an end to their predicament of being increasing "marginalized" amid the economic globalization, African leaders in October 2001 worked together on the New African Initiative, or a new partner initiative, to step up their economic growth and international coordination, The plan, or the Africa Action Plan, is the G-8's response to the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), a dynamic, hopeful program adopted by African leaders to spur the region's economic and political revival. It is aimed to prioritize the development of human resources, the development of infrastructure facilities, agriculture and the manufacturing sector and the maintenance of a balance of the natural ecology, through amassing savings deposits and increasing taxation, while seeking more capital from overseas and attaining more foreign aid by means of loan exemption and other fund-raising measures. The plan has won an extensive support from the international community. On its part, China has been bent on implementing its commitment made to the development of Africa within the framework of the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). To date, China has become a vital force in the Africa's infrastructure development, and it is expected to play a still bigger role in agriculture, the manufacturing business and a couple of other relevant spheres in the region.

Its author is Yao Guimei, a research fellow with the Institute of West Asia and African Studies under the prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and translated by People's Daily Online