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Great potential still needs to be explored in the cooperation and communication between Chinese and African non-governmental organizations (NGOs), heads of NGOs from the two sides said Wednesday here at a China-Africa NGO seminar.
"The Forum of China-Africa Cooperation had built a good platform for the two sides, which had enhanced the communications. In the meantime, however, the people from the two sides are still lack of communication and misunderstandings still exist," said ShuZhan, ambassador of the Secretariat of the Chinese Follow-up Committee of the Forum of China-Africa Cooperation.
The seminar, which invited 20 persons in charge of NGOs and ambassadors from eight African countries and more than ten Chinese NGOs, is the first high-level one linked to the Ministerial Conference of the forum and it is expected to enhance the non-governmental communication between the two sides, Shu said, adding that the fourth Ministerial Conference will be held next month in Egypt.
The Sino-Africa communication used to focus on politics and economics but began to spread to social aspects these years, said He Wenping, professor of the Institute of West Asian and African Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The non-governmental communication is expected to be an important part of the Sino-African relations, and contribute to building the strategic partnership between the two sides, said Li Jinjun, secretary-general of China NGO network for International Exchanges (CNIE), the organizer of the seminar.
"I found the African NGOs have a strong will to learn from China," said Jiang Bo, secretary-general of China Education Association for International Exchanges.
His view was echoed by Ntobeko Melvin Gotyana, president of South Africa National NGO Coalition (SANGOCO).
African NGOs shared many similar targets with China's as the both care about poverty, AIDS, education and environment problems, said Gotyana who came to China for the first time and expected to cooperated with Chinese NGOs.
Peter Oloishura Nkuraiyia, executive director of NGO Co-ordination Board of Kenya, said that both Kenya and China are developing countries and China is more developed so that Kenya NGOs would like to learn from China from many aspects, especially on how to regulate the funds and how to seek help from the governments.
A book named Africa NGOs Studies and Sino-African Relations was launched at the seminar. The book was written by experts of Zhejiang Normal University as a result of a project launched by the Chinese government.
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