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The visiting president of the All- China Women's Federation (ACWF) Chen Zhili said on Tuesday that China has been making hard efforts to promote exchange and cooperation with African countries in terms of women's affairs in the past 50 years.
ACWF, the biggest women's organization in China, started collaborations with African women's organizations in early 1950s, Chen, also vice chairwoman of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People's Congress told Xinhua in an exclusive interview at China-Africa Women's Forum 2009 in Cairo.
"We have carried out a series of exchanges and cooperations with African countries after the Beijing summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2006, which were well received by African women," said Chen.
She said that the summit, with its declaration in China-Africa cooperation and the Beijing Action Plan 2007-2009, introduced women's exchanges into the whole framework of the collaborations between the two sides, and provided new platform for such exchanges.
Chen said that since 2006, ACWF has stepped up the mutual visits of Chinese and African women at high levels. It received many visits of wives of African leaders, chiefs of women's federations and ministers in charge of women's affairs. It also sent delegations to visit African countries and attend international conferences there.
She said that ACWF has already established contacts and exchanges with women's organizations in 51 African countries, and provided micro-finance loans to women in 45 African countries in the past 50 years. In the period of 2007-2009, China provided a total of 6.58 million yuan (about one million U.S. dollars) to 13 African countries.
"We have improved our efforts in providing training to women cadres in Africa, by holding two workshops on the women's political participation and development in 2008 and 2009, which were attended by 40 senior female officials from 21 African countries," Chen said.
She said that ACWF introduced China's experience in poverty relief and rural development to wives of African diplomats in China, who also donated to ACWF's programs to help rural women.
Chen said China will make new efforts in five aspects to further promote women's collaborations with African countries.
She said that China's universities will enroll more African women students, and raise the proportion of those who are sponsored by the Chinese government to more than 30 percent, as against 26.54 percent currently.
"We will encourage more dialogues between Chinese and African women leaders, to share their experience in gender equality and development," said Chen.
She added that the communication between the two sides should be carried out in multi-levels, which involves women lawmakers, education workers, scientists and businesswomen, as well as others, Chen said.
In order to support women and children's development in Africa, China will provide more aid for African women charities and organizations and establish more training centers to facilitate the communication and cooperation.
Chen also called on both sides to improve women's cooperation mechanism in the framework of Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, and improve the governments and civil societies' gender awareness to benefit women's future development.
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