Published by: “Going Global” Comprehensive Service Center for Chinese Enterprise

Time: 2026.1.5

The President Xi Jinping pointed out that: “China and Africa together pursue the dream of modernization, which is bound to ignite a wave of modernization across the Global South and compose a new chapter in building a community with a shared future for mankind.” This important discourse is intrinsically connected with the grand blueprint of the 15th Five-Year Plan proposal. The 15th Five-Year Plan not only charts a key path for modernization with Chinese characteristics, but also, by promoting shared values for all humanity and advancing the building of a better world, demonstrates China's firm commitment to the construction of a community with a shared future for mankind. Within this framework, China and Africa joining hands to promote modernization is both a practical implementation of the Global Development Initiative and a crucial component of the modernization process in the Global South. The development concepts and transformation paths it embodies are highly aligned with the vision of joint modernization with Africa, which will bring new strategic opportunities to bilateral cooperation.

Building the Consensus on Modernization Between China and Africa

China has promoted national transformation through long-term and systematic planning practices and its experience provides a valuable conceptual framework for Africa to explore its own path to modernization. This framework is mainly reflected in three interrelated aspects.

China's development philosophy offers Africa key insights, first and foremost in balancing developmental autonomy and systematicity. China’s modernization drive shows that latecomer countries can explore independent development paths based on their specific conditions. The 15th Five-Year Plan adheres to the general laws of economic and social development while also taking into account the characteristics of the current context, embodying this principle. For Africa this implies that its modernization strategies should be shaped by local conditions and people’s need. Meanwhile, China's demonstrated capacity for systematic implementation through continuous planning—such as translating long-term goals into systemic arrangements and aligning policies with resources, which provides a methodological reference for Africa. In facing complex tasks like industrialization and regional integration, which emphasis on strategic planning and the strengthening of national governance capabilities can help Africa pool resources and advance structural transformation.

While addressing autonomy and systematicity, continuity in development is equally crucial, as reflected in strategic resolve and the pragmatic, incremental approach to implementation. In the face of external uncertainties, the 15th Five-Year Plan reaffirms the general principle of seeking progress while ensuring stability, and sustaining developmental continuity based on an assessment of the economic fundamentals. This offers significant insights for Africa, which is similarly confronted with global fluctuations, as it advances its Agenda 2063, it is essential to maintain policy consistency and secure ownership of its development trajectory. Moreover, China’s experience indicates that a macro-level blueprint needs to be translated into actionable phased tasks with sustained investment in infrastructure, industrial foundations and livelihood support, Endogenous dynamism is built through incremental reforms. The key takeaway for Africa is that modernizing transformation must be achieved through pragmatic, step-by-step actions.

Whether it is adhering to autonomy or sustaining strategic composure, the ultimate aim is human well-being, which requires establishing a people-centered, inclusive and sustainable value orientation. The 15th Five-Year Plan proposes that meeting the people's aspirations for a better life should be the fundamental objective, which defines the assessing criteria. It indicates to Africa that economic growth must be effectively translated into improvements in people's livelihoods, making progress in poverty alleviation, employment, education and healthcare, in order to garner social support for the modernization process. The 15th Five-Year Plan also emphasizes reasonable growth and green development, providing Africa with a framework to coordinate economic, social and environmental conditions, which can assist Africa in leveraging its youthful population structure, natural endowments  and ecological conditions to explore development paths that stimulate innovation and protect the environment, transforming potential advantages into sustainable and widespread prosperity.

Empowering Africa’s Development in Practice

The 15th Five-Year Plan not only sets out the overarching goals for China’s economic and social development over the next five year, but systematically elaborate on strategic approaches to their achievement through a series of specific measures, such as building a modern industrial system, advancing high-level technological self-reliance and self-improvement, fostering a robust domestic market and pursuing high-standard opening-up. For the African continent, which is charting its own path to modernization, China's experience offers actionable insights, can be distilled into five key aeras.

Prioritize the real economy and build a modern industrial system. For many years, numerous African countries have followed the Western model of modernization, heavily influenced by Western economics textbooks, blindly adopted Western market economy systems while neglecting the cultivation and growth of their own real economic foundations. As a result, they have not succeeded in building a strong and sound modern national economy, instead, they have become economic appendages of Western economies under the ideology of neoliberalism. A strong real economy is the cornerstone of modernization. This is a valuable experience of Chinese modernization and should also become one of the fundamental principles for modernization in countries of the Global South.

Prioritize investment in infrastructure and promote endogenous development. In China’s modernization process, infrastructure such as transportation, energy and communications has played a significant pioneering role. The 15th Five-Year Plan recommends continuing to advance the construction of new infrastructure, including 5G, the Internet of Things and data centers. Africa is the region with the weakest infrastructure in the world, promoting modernization there should continue to regard infrastructure as the foundation for fostering industrialization and enhancing industrial capacity. Through mechanisms such as the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative, it is important to eliminate interference from extreme environmentalism, avoid lies such as the debt trap, and strongly attract diversified investments.

Pursue steady, sustainable growth and intensify poverty alleviation efforts. The defining achievement of Chinese modernization is the conclusion of the world’s largest-ever poverty alleviation drive. The battle against poverty is the crowning landmark in the historic achievements of Chinese modernization. Poverty alleviation is one of the core common grounds for China-Africa modernization cooperation and a top experience African nations seek to learn from China. China’s key poverty alleviation models-targeted policy implementation and industrial poverty alleviation-have been piloted in several African nations via South-South cooperation. Proposals in the 15th Five-Year Plan to enhance the overall productivity and quality efficiency of agriculture can similarly offer valuable lessons for the modernization of agriculture and rural areas in Africa, aiding major African countries in exploring pathways toward shared prosperity between urban-rural. Africa can draw on this approach how to narrow disparities between urban-rural and disparities in development opportunities through measures such as rural e-commerce and the social security systems.

Pursue technology-driven growth and foster digital and green economies. Proposals for the 15th Five-Year Plan position scientific and technological innovation at the core. China's experience offers actionable lessons for Africa to grow its digital and green economies. For the digital economy, Africa can emulate China's model: top-level design for systematic digital infrastructure deployment, integration of digital technologies into the real economy and cultivation of robust industrial ecosystems. On green transition, Africa can follow China's structured approach to building green industrial systems via policy planning and putting in place standards, norms and governance frameworks. The emphasis in the 15th Five-Year Plan on high-level technological self-reliance and self-strengthening also offers Africa insights into advancing technological innovation as a systematic project, including how to build a full innovation chain spanning basic research to industrial application.

Stay committed to opening up and advance the global integration of industrial chains. Amid global industrial chain realignment, the 15th Five-Year Plan proposes encouraging the outbound expansion of selected industries. China will remain steadfast in opening up across all scenarios. It draws on global markets to advance Chinese modernization, while its strong, comprehensive industrial chains supply vital impetus to globalization. Africa can leverage its labor endowments, free trade zone policies and geographical advantages to attract the gradual relocation of Chinese manufacturing, particularly in textiles, home appliances and automobile assembly. China and Africa can also partner to build regional industrial parks, raise local processing share and avoid overreliance on raw material exports.

Building a China-Africa Community with a Shared Future

As a guiding program for China’s long-term development, the 15th Five-Year Plan Recommendations-comprehensive and strategic in nature-lays a systematic foundation for deepening and expanding China-Africa cooperation. Its defined and development priorities and cooperation principles align with the objectives of Africa's Agenda 2063, driving China-Africa cooperation beyond traditional sectors into wider and more advanced fields. This opens up new practical pathways for forging a China-Africa community with a shared future.

In development planning and global governance, implementation of the 15th Five-Year Plan will foster closer engagement between China and Africa in sharing state governance experience and coordinating positions on global affairs. China's approach to advancing national development through successive long-term plans provides Africa with a valuable reference for formulating and executing long-term development strategies. Through established dialogue mechanisms, the two sides can strengthen exchanges on development planning, policy design and implementation evaluation. In international affairs, the principles of multilateral cooperation embodied in the recommendations align with Africa's pursuit of a more equitable and rational international order. The two sides can further align their stances and actions on global challenges including climate change, digital governance and public health, working together to uphold the shared interests of the developing world.

By valuing exchanges and mutual learning among civilization, the 15th Five-Year Plan emphasizes providing clear guidance for strengthening the public foundation of China-Africa cooperation. Going forward, the two sides can expand educational cooperation and refine the academic major mix for international students, promote regular exchanges between academic institutions, cultural groups and youth organizations, deepen media content sharing and co-production and facilitate travel flows and cultural industry collaboration. These steps will boost mutual understanding between our two societies and foster a favorable public and social climate for long-term cooperation.

For capacity building and sustainable development, the 15th Five-Year Plan focus on education, science and technology, health and other fields directly respond to Africa’s key need to strengthen its capacity for independent development. Within this framework, China-Africa cooperation can further advance human resource development by jointly establishing vocational and technical training facilities that meet Africa's industrial needs, step up joint research and skills development in digital technology, renewable energy and disease prevention and control, and share practical experience in public health systems and primary health care. Such collaboration will help African countries systematically build human capital and independent capacity in key technologies, laying a firm foundation for their long-term growth.

Systematically alignment between the 15th Five-Year Plan with Africa's Agenda 2063 is enabling China-Africa cooperation to evolve into a comprehensive cooperation architecture featuring policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration and people-to-people bonds. The evolving model not only enhances development gains for both sides, but also provides a valuable reference paradigm for the Global South in pursuing development paths tailored to their own national conditions.