China’s development roadmap inspires Africa

17 january 2013

BUJUMBURA — China’s development roadmap in the 1980s has yielded positive results, and it can inspire Africa and especially Burundi, an international relations expert said Wednesday.

“I believe that the Chinese development roadmap can inspire many African countries in general and Burundi in particular, because China also faced economic difficulties before the 1980s,” Etienne Buregeya, a lecturer at the University of Burundi, told Xinhua in an interview.

“China made tremendous policy reforms and this allowed the country to be amongst the world’s economic powers,” he said.

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Despite the fact that China is still regarded as a developing country, it is “now competing” with the United States in terms of economic growth, the expert said.

He said China’s economic growth could be attributed to its “deep reforms”, the adoption of policies suitable to the Chinese reality and a hard-working spirit.

The expert noted that during China’s reform process, the government created jobs for millions and millions of youths who were jobless, and this was one of the solutions to high population growth and unemployment.

“During the reform era, the Chinese government adopted a good employment policy for the active population and put vulnerable people in centers where they were taken care of,” he said.

Buregeya indicated that China has achieved its economic development due to its community development schemes.

“Here (in Burundi), opposition party militants are reluctant to attend community development activities, which would indeed highly contribute to the country’s development, because they think their engagement in the work would mean supporting the ruling party,” he said.

This is an obstacle to development and it takes time to change such behaviors, he said.