Assessing the Gains and Challenges of Nigeria’s Participation in The Forum On China-Africa Cooperation(FOCAC) (Published)
The paper examined the benefit that Nigeria has gotten following her participation in the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation(FOCAC) which was established in the year 2000 in Beijing, China. FOCAC is seen as an example of the South-South Co-operation attempt to realise the dreams of the Guandung Conference held in Indonesia in 1955. The paper relied on secondary data which were sourced from textbooks, journal papers, and seminar papers among others that are related to the subject matter and adopted complex interdependence theory as a framework of analysis. Findings from this work show that Nigeria’s participation in the forum has greatly enhanced trade and increased Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as available data shows that FDI in Nigeria has increased exponentially heating 19.27 billion US dollars in the year 2019 against 1,900 times that of 1971 when the diplomatic ties were established. FOCAC has also helped in developing Nigeria’s infrastructure like the construction of the Abuja- Kaduna railway line, among other benefits. However, findings also revealed that there are challenges in this relation, typical among them are the fear expressed by so many Nigerians of the likely hood of Nigeria falling into the Chinese debt trap, unbalanced trade which favors China, and security challenges confronting Nigeria like kidnapping, banditry, and terrorism among others. Based on this, the work recommends that China should use the platform of FOCAC to allay this fear of the debt trap and assist Nigeria in confronting these securities challenges. On the part of Nigeria, the paper recommends that Nigeria need to increase her export trade among other measures, as this will help her build a strong economy and have the resources to supply China’s growing need, rather than demand for energy resources and other raw materials.
Keywords: Africa, Assessment, China, Cooperation, forum