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A view of Oriental Industrial Park in Addis Ababa of Ethiopia on August 2, 2023 Photo: Tu Lei/GT
“‘It smells so good! I can’t believe that the biscuits are made of pure millet!’ This is always what our African partners would say when they visit our millet processing plant in Burkina Faso,” Zhao Hanqing, deputy general manager of Zhongdi Overseas Agricultural Development Co, told the Global Times.
Zhao said farmers are motivated to grow more after they realize that there is market demand, which is increased through industrialization.
“Africa has a lot of idle land and abundant agricultural labor, but farmers are reluctant to expand planting. They ask, what happens if you grow more than you can eat or sell? The difficulty was that no one further processed or commercialized the crops, and that’s why we set up the processing factory,” said Zhao.
Processed food, with more added value, can be shipped longer distances, which can promote the development of cultivation in reverse, staffers at Chinese agricultural firms that have set up food processing plants in Africa told the Global Times.
“It is relatively difficult for agriculture to develop and modernize rapidly in Africa if primary agricultural products are not processed to add value,” said a representative of a Chinese firm that built a modern agro-industrial park in Abuja, Nigeria. There are oil extraction, rice processing and cassava processing plants in the park.
Chinese coffee importers are also seeking chances to build agro-industrial parks in Africa to promote coffee exports while providing African coffee products with more added value.
“We are planning to organize a business tour to Africa with several other coffee importers to explore if we can set up agro-industrial parks for coffee bean processing,” a Changsha-based Chinese coffee importer surnamed Xiao said.
African agricultural development needs systemic support.
For example, China helps Africa build infrastructure projects and open up logistics links so that farmers can have markets to absorb their increased crops, Chinese agricultural experts who participated in the “Small Technology, Big Harvest” project in Africa told the Global Times.