China will fulfil promise to Africa

THE Government of the People's Republic of China has given the assurance that it will continue to fulfil the promises it made to Africa during the China-Africa Summit in 2006.
China, at the end of the two-day Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation, gave a promise to double its aid and trade to Africa to $100 billion by 2010.
The Chinese Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Yu Wenzhe, who gave the assurance when he paid a courtesy call on the Editor of the Daily Graphic, Mr Ransford Tetteh, in Accra yesterday, announced some of the measures undertaken so far to ensure that those promises made in respect of Ghana were fulfilled.
He said the Chinese Embassy was preparing to assist Ghanaians, particularly those in the media, to enrol in exchange programmes in China to learn Chinese, as well as the cultural and socio-economic activities of the people of China.
"I hope that the media in Ghana will have more opportunities to visit China, acquaint themselves with what is going on there and bring back relevant information for publication," he stated, and pointed out that if the two countries were to co-operate in an effective and efficient manner, then "it was essential that the people of both countries understood each other’s culture".
One area of constraint affecting trade between the two countries, according to the Ambassador, was the language barrier, which he said was very crucial if trade relations between the two countries were to improve significantly.
He commended the media in Ghana for their role during the 2008 elections and the transition period, stressing that "everyone was calling for peace and eventually, with the help of the media, everything came out all right".
Mr Wenzhe revealed that as part of the cultural integration programme between the two countries, the biggest news agency in China, the Xinhua News Agency, would soon send some journalists to work in Ghana and report on China-Ghana trade relations.
He expressed optimism that with the support of the media in Ghana, the team from Xinhua would be able to send first-hand information from Ghana to China, and vice versa.
Mr Tetteh, who is also the President of the Ghana Journalists Association, recalled that relations between the two countries dated back to the administration of Ghana's first President, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah.
He said he was hopeful that the gesture by the Chinese government to assist media practitioners in Ghana to study in China would yield the desired result of breaking the language barrier to help solve issues that existed as a result of the lack of communication, adding that the difficulty encountered by traders of both countries as a result of the language barrier was not helpful.
Mr Tetteh said Ghanaians and the world at large were amazed at the technological advancement of China during the recent 2008 Olympics held in Beijing and expressed the hope that with China's assistance, Ghana and Africa in general would be able to face the storm of financial crisis facing the world.