China pledges support for Somalia’s peace and reconstruction efforts

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Chinese Ambassador to Somalia Qian Jian on Wednesday said China will strongly support the nation's peace and reconstruction process as part of the bilateral pact between the two countries.

Qian said Beijing has made massive contributions to various fields in the African nation to foster economic and social development that would assist the country in acquiring political stability.

"The Chinese government has built over 80 infrastructural projects like hospitals, stadiums and roads to ease the burden of the Somali people. We have dispatched a medical team of more than 400 members in 13 batches to the country since 1991," he said in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, during celebrations to mark the 68th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Speaker of the Somalia’s House of People, Mohamed Osman Jawari, congratulated the Chinese government on the occasion and shared his country’s best wishes to the nation.

"Relations between Somalia and China commenced in 1960 after we attained independence, and ever since we signed our first official trade agreement in 1963, the Somali people have been beneficiaries of Chinese benevolence in the areas of maternal and child care as well as other infrastructural largess," Jawari said.

Somalia has been dogged by a war waged by Islamic terrorist group al-Shabaab for almost a decade. The conflict has destroyed a massive amount of property, leaving a great number of deadths and the national development adversely affected.

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