Content area
Full Text
Africa has emerged as a major partner in China's Belt and Road Initiative, and that is paying dividends for science on the continent.
Inside a greenhouse on the edge of Nairobi, a small crate holds the hopes of Robert Gituru and a team of researchers from Kenya and China. It is filled with healthy bunches of red and green grapes - some of the first ever produced in central Africa.
The grapes are varieties developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and designed to thrive in warm, semi-arid environments. A joint Kenyan-Chinese team has been growing them with the aim of planting the seeds of a wine-producing industry in Kenya.
"It's got some people here very excited" says Gituru, director of the Sino-Africa Joint Research Centre, a facility established with the help of CAS that opened last November in the grounds ofthe Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.
Grapes aren't the only crop that the centre has received from CAS; the academy has also brought strains of rice that have the potential to increase Kenya's production by more than one-third, according to Gituru. Chinese researchers have also introduced a method ofusing plastic sheets to preserve soil humidity for fields planted with maize (corn).
For Kenya, the results of these experiments could have some big impacts: like many parts of Africa, the country faces perennial food shortages. "The next step is to try these on a large scale" says Gituru.
China's presence in Africa has been increasing for two decades, but it started to accelerate in 2013, when President Xi Jinping launched his ambitious infrastructure-development project, now known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). That venture, often estimated to cost more than US$1 trillion, aims to connect China with more than 130 nations through roads, railways and marine links to increase trade and China's influence in the world.
So far, 39 African countries and the African Union Commission have signed BRI cooperation agreements, with others expected to follow. Africa has emerged as one of the strongest supporters of the BRI, with most of the continent having joined the programme; and China has become the largest financier of African infrastructure, funding one in five projects. As in many other regions participating in the...