As African leaders are gathering in Beijing for a summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), expectations run high for the two sides to strengthen their already solid friendship and further enhance pragmatic cooperation to bring tangible benefits to the Chinese and African people.

The summit will link the Belt and Road Initiative with the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the African Union's Agenda 2063 and individual countries' development plans to explore new territory for Africa's revival, “that is a wonderful cocktail, a wonderful cocktail of objectives of goals that we have to put together to produce a win-win,” said Cyril Ramaphosa, President of the Republic of South Africa.

“If you look at it carefully, they all result in one thing, prosper your neighbor, have a win-win outcome for everything that we do, and this is the way the world is going,” the president added.

Regarding the rising protectionism and unilateralism in the world, the president said we got to take the world out of the jungle.

“There are some countries, that leaders who want to take the world back, to the rules of the jungle that the one who wins takes everything, winner takes all. They are only promoting their own interests, and say my country first, my interests first, and we believe that we cannot take the world to the jungle,” said the President.

“Us who believe in multilateralism, us who believe in win-win outcomes, we must stick together, we must raise our voices, and we must insist that the best way the world can go is a win-win approach, partnership approach, and an approach where the multilateralism becomes the order of the day, and we must not weaken multilateral institutions in the world”, the President added.