Africa is an important region along the Belt and Road route. And China-Africa cooperation has been productive. Let's take a look at the latest progress of major Belt and Road projects there. On New Year's Day, the Chinese-built 756-kilometer electrified rail project connecting landlocked Ethiopia to Djibouti officially started commercial operations. It's the first trans-boundary and longest electrified railway on the African continent. It provides both passenger and freight services.

The same day, the first freight train on the standard gauge railway left Mombasa for Nairobi. The 471-kilometer stretch is the first section of a planned East Africa railway network. The railway opened to traffic on June first last year. Travel time has been cut from over ten hours to a little more than four. In 2016, China's investment in Africa was more than 3.2 billion US dollars. That's 1.92 percent of China's gross external investment. In the first half of 2017, the figure was more than 1.5 billion dollars, accounting for 3.3 percent of the total.