The FOCAC summit held between 3-5 December 2015 coincided with the launching of China’s second Africa policy paper and became the first time that a FOCAC summit was held on African soil as the others had all been Ministerial gatherings following the first summit in Beijing. It came in a watershed year for global development efforts as the year witnessed the Financing for Development meeting in Addis Ababa, the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations, the hosting of the Ministerial meeting of the WTO in Nairobi (for the first time in Africa), and the Conference of the Parties (COP21) held in Paris. Within this broader context, the following policy brief, which arises from a research project between the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD) and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), seeks to draw linkages between China’s second Africa policy paper and the declarations of the Johannesburg summit. It thus asks what the FOCAC summit managed to achieve before asking what the way forward is in terms of China-Africa relations.

Submitted by IGD