Africa and China in Effort to Construct a New World — The Perspective of Mao and Nkrumah

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Public Lecture of Dr. Li Bo

Africa and China in Effort to Construct a New World — The Perspective of Mao and Nkrumah

Your excellences, Dear Friends, Dear Comrades!

It is a great honor for me to be here at this special Day with you, in memory of Dr. Nkrumah’s legacy and of the history of Chian-Africa relationship forged by the generation of Nkrumah and Mao and Zhou En-lai. I would like to thank Secretary-General of SMG, Mr. Kwest Pratt, my friend, for inviting me to come. This is my first outdoor public lecture in Africa. When entering into this courtyard yesterday, I felt the kind of spirit and smell of cadre school in Mao’s Yan-An time, where lecture and speech carried out only in such open space. I immediately felt this place is like my home! I belong to here!

Allow me to go back into history a bit.

When I took Kwesi’s invite, and began preparing my speech, I discovered that during the 1950s and 1960s, under Chairman Mao’s leadership, the newly founded PRC provided multiple support to African independence movements, spanning fom diplomatic and moral,to economic and military dimensions.

China voiced its firm opposition to neo-colonialism in Afirca continent through diplomatic statements and international forums. In 1963-1964, during his visit to ten African nations, our Premier Zhou Enlai, who also visted Ghana  and met with Dr. Nkrumah here, proposing China’s Eight Principles of Foreign Aid, which emphasized “non-interference in internal affairs” — core principles, that remain foundational to today’s Belt and Road Initiative and China’s development aids. 

Despite its own economic hardships back then, China offered material and financial assistance to African nations to consolidate their independence and foster development. For instance, in 1962, China dispatched agricultural experts to Mali to cultivate sugarcane and establish first sugar-processing facilities there. The monumental Tazara Railway project had been launched in 1967, China provide nearly 1 billion yuan in interest-free loans and technical support for its giant construction effort.

Finally, China directly aided African nations in their “wars of independence” by supplying weapons and military equipment, supporting struggles such as Algeria’s fight for liberation. 

Today, we saw, This moral, material, and military assistance of China helping African nations laid the groundwork for the enduring friendship between China and Africa continent!

On the very day the CIA-backed coup unfolded, Dr. Nkrumah’s plane had just landed in Beijing. It was Premier Zhou Enlai who broke the news to him. This Day of Shame presents a turning point that derailed Ghana’s socialist path of independence.

Yesterday, comrade Kwesi gave me the book  “The Great Deception”, which reveals that the U.S. government’s final decision moment to eliminate Dr. Nkrumah stemmed from their deep fear. USA was afraid about the influence of his seminal work, “Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism”. It was coincident that I found the Chinese edition of this book printed in 1960’s on my father’s book shelf and I have shown that photo to Kwesi. The China-Africa bound must be really deep!

Now I come to my today’s topics, it has three parts:

1. Firstly I am going to explain China’s Socialist Construction’s Lessons.
   Specifically, how have Chinese comrades maintained China’s socialist cause during last 4 decades of so called “opening and reform period”?  Over the past five years, as fellow member of Tricontinental Research Insitute I have duty to deliver China Studies’ lecture to comrades from all Global South countries, this was the key question people asked me.
2. Then I am going to talk the Multipolar World and the role China is going to play.
3. In the last part, I am going to share my thoughts on how would we inherit the Spirit of President Dr. Nkrumah and especially how can we creatively follow his guidance? Also I am going to talk the second version of Belt and Road Initiative — BRI. How should it help Africa embark on a new path of development?

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Let me begin with Part One: My statement is:The Achievements of China’s Socialism Today Are the Result of Applying comrade Mao Zedong’s Thought in the New Era under new conditions!

Let me address the following four questions to validate my statement:

Question 1. What China today’s success Is telling us about the correct Relationship Between Socialism system and the Market forces play?

After completing China’s First Five-Year Plan and establishing the socialist system in 1957, besides public ownership units, there were also collective ownership units and partial individual ownership units. Therefore, Mao Zedong proposed that socialism still requires a stage of commodity production (so called Waren Production in German in Marx’s “ Das Capital Vol. 1” ) , it required respecting the material exchange laws of the commodity economy （meaning one collective may sells goods with a surplus make-up to other collectives or public ownership units and vice versa）, recognizing the different collective units’ interests, and avoiding “command-style” egalitarianism, which happened for a shortwhile fo 3 years during People’s Commune Movement.

In 1958, when handling issues in advancing socialism in rural China and when studying the debates of the Soviet Union’s Theory of political economy, comrade Mao Zedong stated: “Commodity production (Waren produktion) should be viewed based on the economic fundamental system it is associated with. If it is linked to a capitalist system, it will be capitalist commodity production; if it is linked to a socialist system, then it is socialist commodity production.”

So 30 years later, around 1990 comrade Deng Xiaoping further developed Mao’s idea by his famous saying: Both socialism and capitalism can utilize the tools of planning and market forces. Important is who controls the superstructure an state-craftto manage the tools.

Of course, using “market tools” can lead to many negative consequences and harmful imbalances that need to be corrected by the proactive state-craft and interventions.

So China’s so called economic miracle during 1979-2012 was built firstly upon the economic solid industrial foundation laid by Mao Zedong’s period; secondly it rely heavily on national macro Five-Year Plans, this year 2025 marks the last year of our 14^th national Five-Year Plan, starting from 1952, only with short break during cultural revolution time. My friend Prof. Meng Jie rightly called chinese market force play by using   “constructed market” famework, which is guided by central statecraft and policy; thirdly it benefits from a socialist systemic setting, where public ownership and public offerings are dominant in key sectors in the economy.

Public ownership remains the key foundation for functioning, such as

• The backbone of the economy’s key sectors are in hand of 100 central level SOEs, each employs often half million staff in country (China Railway Corp. is the largest among them by employing 2 mio. Staff in whole counrty). Key sectors such as mining, steel, telecommunications, energy, transportation, banking, and urban public services are run by c.a.100 central-level SOE and c.a. 10-20 thousands local SOEs.
• The state controls land resources, mineral resources, banks, capital markets, and currency autonomy.
• The State manages public education resources, determines legislation, and holds the levers of taxation and redistribution.

Therefore we can draw Two key conclusions:

• Without the setting of socialist public ownership and the national planning goals and policy, private enterprises could not grow and prosper at all. Put this in more academic term: because state policy and SOEs created lots of positive external effects, the private sector or business could shamlesly leveraged this externalities at free cost! Each year China public education system produced mill of high quality STEM student, Companies like Huawei and Alibaba hired 100 thousands of them for sofisticated tasks in engineering and soft development. 
• The efficiency of China’s socialist mixed economy is going to surpass the increasingly monopolistic market economy in West in general. This is why the so called “China’s Sputnik moment” has arrived! I go back to this in second part later

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Question 2. Your comrades may ask further, why Are Billionaires allowed to live with a Socialist Society?

comrade Mao Zedong had also foresight in this! In one of his important writings of Mao: “On Coaltion Government”, published before establishment of PRC, he explained the necessity of transforming national bourgeois class and integrating them into the body of people. Four small stars on China’s national flag represent the 4 social classes in society (workers，peasants, petty- and national bourgeois ) until today. During the 1950’s Mao personally envolved to educate the leading national pariot capitalist, to convince them to accept socialist reform and to make use of their special management skills. Mao pointed out: National bourgeois always carry a dual nature we need to be aware of: namely they can become comprador capitalists who surrender to imperialism and align with the Western system, or they can be patriots who resist imperialism and conribute to socialist projects at different stages, and so has the potential to become part of people.

In recent 3-3 years, we have witnessed this dual nature again: after the COVID-19 pandemic, China faced overlapping challenges in the real estate sector collapse, local government debt, and youth unemployment  for graduates. Seizing this opportunity, USAID in Washington, which today is almost dead, orchestrated Western media and some Chinese social media bloggers to smear China’s economic prospects. The concept they use is called “China Peak” — basically saying China had absorpted all development potential and can only go down in future with slow tempo so China can never catch up with USA’s economic size. They use the trick is to measure GDP only in current US$/RMB exhcange curse, not use the purchsing power measure! — This campaign had worked on some investors and compradors to relocate their money and HQs to City State Singapore, where any Chinese tourist can enter without visa. In the reality, the electricity consumption in China is already doppelt the size of those on USA.

We also saw another encouraging trendat some time. Since 2017, when the United States launched large-scale trade war and technology wars against China, It showes this worked out as the best education lesson for China’s naional entrepreneurs — I prefer to use thjis term to replace national bourgeois. Hundreds of Chinese companies’s name—ranging from semiconductor designers and software developers to garment manufacturers—appeared on U.S. long sanction list. Experiencing these sanctions firsthand, Chinese national entrepreneurs have become more patriotic, realizing that the West ultimate goal is prevent China from developing high-value-added industrie, their goal is enslave China, like they kept doing it to the Africa nations in past decades, no, in past 200 years, no longer in 350 years.

In general, in past 13 years China’s national entrepreneurs are become much more determined to support the leadership of the CPC and committed to China’s socialist Model of modernization.

This “new social strata” of national entrepreneurs receive education program about how to learn from massline of CPC and how work for people,and what are the roadmap of Chinese socialism,  The CPC”s United Front Work Department and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), regularly organizes those programs  

Best example of national entrepreneurs is Huawei’s CEO,Mr Ren Zhengfei, who believed in free trade doctrine. His company provided 4G netwok in Latin America, Europe and Africa to enable broadband connectivity. Later Huawei invented and led 5G technology. Based on rumors that Huawei worked with government, USA cut off the chi supply for Huawei, banned purchase from Huawei and directed his allies to do so. In 2018. Huawei has been forced to retreat from high-end smartphone market for 4 years which led to heavy loses. Even his daughter got detained for 2 years in custody by Canadian police following US a court order. Ren, supptorted by state, stayed unbowed and led Huawei to challenge the 7 nanameter chips production for its high-end smartphone he did one step further, invented the HarmonyOS, an open-source operating system, that breaks Google’s Android monopoly positon in the world. It’s much worthy to mention, that Huawei as a private company followed a charter that priscribes an universal profit-sharing scheme, which all engineers staff could participate. As founder of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei himself holds less than 2% of the company’s profit shares. 

Because we at Guancha Media are reporting lots of innovation stories made by young entrepreneurs born in 90’s, they have no problem to talk concepts like “planned economy in the new digital age,” “capping private capital returns…in order to give higher shares to labors”, “the ultimate destiny of private ownership is merged with state capital” etc. I got strong believe that we are going to see a gradual adaptation of socialist ideas for common prosperity by new generation of national entrepreneurs in China, more and more.

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3. How state in China managed to Mitigate the Harmful Effects the Market created?

As matter of fact, a market economy lacking social oversight is automatically creating extreme imbalances: Such as environmental degradation, widening wealth gaps, intensified urban-rural income disparities, and the destruction of rural life in the end. We have to acknowledge that before 2008, during China’s rapid wave of marketization, government experience and capability with state regulation were much insufficient, such harmful imbalances did emerge to varying degrees in different regions, causing wide social concerns.

In responce to address those concerns, in 2006, the CPC leadership proposed the construction of new countryside and declared the vision of ecological green and inclusive development.

In August 2005, during his tenure as Party Secretary of Zhejiang Province, comrade Xi Jinping visited Anji County and proposed the concept: “Clear waters and Green mountains are as valuable as gold and silver mountains.” This was later later shorthed as the “Xi’s Two Mountains Theory” that had have profound impact on development priority and changed the life and the landscape of whole China.

When comrade Xi Jinping became General Secretary in 2012, the first priority was combating corruption to purify the political environment. The second priority was promoting green development to improve air and water quality. Report said that the improvement in air quality over seven years in Beijing was equivalent to the progress the United States achieved  over 30 years after its Clean Air Act passed.  And The third priority of Xi was eradicating absolute poverty, which everybody knew.

Over the past 15 years, China’s electric vehicle industry, renewable energy sector, and national ecological restoration have led the world. China’s socialist approach simultaneously resolved environmental harms, developed green technologies, and achieved the carbon peak target ahead of schedule. Again, we have here a strong case for socialist superiority over capitalism!

At the end of 2020, China achieved a phased victory in poverty alleviation. Immediately afterward, in 2021, the government launched the Rural Revitalization Plan. Over the past decade, State allocated more than 1 trillion US $ funds directly towards rural area’s development and improved roads and telecommunicaiton massively. So not only ryral residents’ income growth has significantly outpaced that of urban residents. Many young people are now choosing to leave their city jobs and return to their hometowns, to start organic farming businesses or join new cooperative entities.

The Fourth and last Question of your comrades: How the concept of Class Strugglehe got kept on and however, its manifesting form got transformed at China’s current Socialism Phase

The phrase “We must be prepared to carry out great struggles with many new historical characteristics” was incorporated firstly into the political report of the 18th National Congress of the CPC in 2012. What we know today is that was done at comrade Xi Jinping’s insistence. Over the past 13 years, he has repeatedly emphasized the necessity of engaging in different types of “great struggles.”

In my believe “great Struggle” concept is more appropriate and dialectical one for China’s todays’ stage. On one hand, it is broader and more flexible than using of “class struggle” alone. On the other hand, it can be more specific and more targeted, referring to specific struggle against Western hegemonism, against liberal ideology, against corruption, and against bureaucracy. In each specific struggle you may chose different coalition tactics and maximize leverage.

We should keep lessons lerant: Lenin taught us that the vast ocean of a market forces constantly generates petty-bourgeois consciousness. Later, Mao Zedong taught us that the collusion between state power and capital would create new bourgeoisie class. Xi Jinping now teaches us that if corruption is not effectively curbed, there is a true eminent risk of both Party and state would collapse. So our socialist project would fell! The reality of Western hegemonic power’s manipulating efforts with color revolutions over the past 30 years against CPC also demonstrates the true existence of a kind “fifth column” in our country!. Hybrid warfare and information warfare occur continuously, often partially implemented by members of our own universities, media professionals, own and imported NGOs.  Thanks of “cultural revolution” happening in USA, we firstly know that more than 1,200 influential KoLs in China were on USAID’s payment list.

Therefore, ideological struggle is essentially a manifestation of “class struggle” under new circumstances. There are market-oriented reforms that align with socialism’s destiny and those that lean toward capitalism.

However, today’s form of class struggle in China much differs from the CPC’s earlier phases of seizing power before 1949 and that of consolidating power during 50s-60s later. Physical and brutal methods are no longer necessary. Instead, China’s today struggle has transformed into a long-term “hybrid” one, and has mutiple forms to manifest. Manifesting could take form of a military warefore; it could take form of cultural warfare by creating animaiton movie, like recently succesful “ Na Ze 2”, or by engaging media warfare like we do everyday in Guancha news; it could take a form of collective learning and self-education of Party cell members…you can name a long list herefore. Also the frontlines of the struggle often shift, we run into situations where former comrades-in-arms may become opponents on next issues.

This “hybrid” form of class struggle actually also occurred during periods of China’s revolutionary war and during that of early construction of socialist experiment. Study the CPC history you will find plenty cases.  comrades Mao Zedong’s dialectical approach—distinguishing between primary and secondary contradictions, identify real threats, building a united front to isolate reactionaries, and correctly handling contradictions among thepeople —remains the most sophisticated guide for identifying enemies and clarifying the direction of struggle at specific stage.

Let’s conclude Part 1: Proactive Statecraft and Strong CPC leadership are the preconditions to allow market forces functioning in an effective way in order to make contrbution to socialist cause. China’s 40 years experiment showes, this approach can work! It was not a success for neo-liberalism. This is not a state capitalism appraoch either. My friends and my comrades, it’s people centered approach, it’s socialist approach! Viva socialism!

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Part Two: The New Multipolar World Order and China’s Role to help Global South’s Development

We have entered a multipolar world in a real sense!

To be candid, before 2022, China’s approach to building a new global order was differed from Russia’s. China pursued a “non-revolutionary” approach for a while:

• On one hand, China advocated for reforms within the existing international framework to address its inequities and to call for implementing authentic multilateralism led by UN charter’s spirit.
• On the other hand, since 2012, China has strengthened its rapports with Russia, expanded investments into its military capabilities, to counter against U.S. led provocations in the South China Sea under the cover of “freedom of navigation.”

After the Russia-Ukraine military conflict erupted, China firmly denied any sanctions against Russia. The Biden administration and NATO displayed blatant hostility toward China, with growing calls to “fight two wars”: defeating Russia first, then pushing NATO into Asia to turn Taiwan into a “second Ukraine.” Given this severe situation, China’s support for a multipolar world has finally become resolute and explicit.

To advance a multipolar world, new platforms must be established. I personally strong believe that one of key platforms is the BRICS mechanism. In 2023—the second year after the Russia-Ukraine conflict—the BRICS had summit in South Africa and declared to expand its membership to 10 countries — For the first time!

By the end of 2023, the GDP of the Western G7 accounted for 29% of the global total, while the BRICS 10 countries accounted for about 36% (in PPP terms). Looking ahead, the BRICS group’s share of global GDP and its contribution to global growth surpasses that of the G7 by far. Calculation said that by 2035 the BRICS 10’s GDP will double the size of that of G7.

Moreover, BRICS countries together have promising potential in three major areas, which can and will empower the advancement of the Global South: 1) its Potential in Agricultural Production and Mineral Resources; 2) Potential in Energy Supply regarding both traditional and Renewable Energy, and 3) Potential in engineering and science (STEM) talent and in Information Technology, China and India train millions of STEM graduates each year, while Russia has a world-class education system in mathematics and aerospace.

We have to figure out new ways to leverage the potentials BRICS mechanism could offer for Global south world yet!

As a side note: The West is also part of the new multipolar world. In a February interview recently, the new U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, admit that the Trump administration accepts the multipolar worldview and there are many powers aside United States.

Now one would ask, what role will China play in this multipolar world? What is China’s true relationship with the countries of the Global South?

China considers itself always as a member of developing countries’ camp in the past and insist to that. At the BRICS summit in 2023, China firstly declared that “China will always belong to the Global South camp.” We, as both representatives of Guancha media and of Tricontinental Research Institute, are very pround of this declaration made by Chinese leaders in 2023, because we started to advacate and promote the strategic alliance between China and Global South since 2021 in an extensive way.  

China’s position aligns with Chairman Mao’s political legacy: “ China must make a greater contribution to humanity; China will never seek hegemony, even after becoming strong ! ”

Two reasons I can offer to further validate the postion China claims:

First, history! China’s so called rise is just a return to its historical normal position.
Around 1850, China’s GDP accounted for approximately 30% of the world’s total, roughly proportional to its population. In 2023, China’s GDP accounts roughly 17% of global and similar to it’s population share of 17% of today’s world.

If history is the best teacher—and I can assure you that China’s entire political philosophy and statecraft wisdom are rooted in deep respect for history—then China’s global positioning will be based on the principle of “Wang-Dao” . Dao means the way, Wang-Dao means to benefit world with moral high ground and rich material supply, and to treat every country equally regardless big or small.  Therefore Wang- Dao represents a concept of global governance that balances morality and interests, promotes shared development and inclusiveness.

The second reason I offer is that the form of economic globalization started to change, which favors much regional development model and more mutually beneficial approach.

In past 6-7 yars, the global supply chains underwent dramatic restructuring movement. USA and EU started to implement their “near-shore and friendly-shore” strategy to cut off their affraid dependence on China’s huge manufacturing machinery. We now witness the rise of “parallel globalizations”, occured in three key spheres:

• The first sphere revolves around China’s own key supply chains expansion, with emphasis on strengthening South-South cooperation, especially with ASEAN countries and EURASIA economic space.
• The second sphere is involving a insular one, so called “High Fence, small Yard” style of globalization. It means that the Northern countries (USA, EU, Japan, etc.) put political objectives — national security, border protection and protection of technological monopoly — as their priority before economic.
• The third sphere fosters deeper regional supply chain cooperation and trade re-configuration, providing chances for forging Africa’s free trade and economic zones to offer a path to re-industrialization and capital accumulation. Today, 50% of Chinese population, more than 600 mio people, still live in small towns and county rural areas. China has face the same pressures to focus on domestic market production by re-configure reginal supply chains and domestic trade.

And finally, to confirm the today’s strength China has to promote better governance based on Wangdao principle, I want to mentiona report released this month by Deutsche Bank. For the first time western analyists acknowledged that a “China Sputnik moment” has arrived on multiple levels:

In manufacturing,  China’s manufacturing value-added, calculated in USD, accounts for over 30% of the world’s total. If put it into PPP, it would account more than 50% of global.

In high-tech fields, China has independent research and production systems in 5G, computer operating systems, chip design and manufacturing, aerospace, quantum computing, and nuclear fusion etc.. Notably, Sputnik arrived in the field of AI, DeepSeek has democratized LLM technology worldwide! This not only wiped out $1 trillion USD from Nvidia’s stock bubble but also created new possibilities for AI sovereignty in the Global South. My camrad Jeff Xiong from Tricon Institute is today here, and his team is working on this impotrant issue of digital sovereignty!

Sputnik moment arrived also in military weapon system: China is now on equal footing with the United States in conventional weaponary upgrade. In areas such as sixth-generation fighter jets, hypersonic missiles, and naval warships new design, China has surpassed the United States already.

With this positoin from strength , China can calmly respond to the various provocations or game plays of the current U.S. government under Trump.

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Now we come to Part Three: Nkrumah’s Legacy and Africa’s Path moving forward

After gaining independence, many African countries initially pursued socialist planned economies. Dr. Nkrumah was one of the most respected pioneers of this path. He promoted Ghana’s industrialization and agricultural modernization and established free education and healthcare systems. Although challenges such as funding shortages and management issues within SOE prevented full realization, Nkrumah’s projects in infrastructure and social services remain an important legacy for Ghana.

The global resurgence of neoliberalism and privatization wave in 1980s and 1990s, coupled with Western interferences, Africa’s development path has sadly struggled to break free from the shackles of “colonial dependency.”

• The share of manufacturing in Africa’s GDP even declined from 15% in 1980 to 10% in 2020.
• Education and healthcare disparities rises with rising inequality. environmental costs also rises heavily.
• “If GDP growth does not translate into food on people’s tables, it is merely a numbers game for the elite.”  We look at South Africa—the continent’s most developed economy—it now has the highest Gini coefficient globally, at 0.63.

In short, the neoliberal economic model of the past 30 years has failed to deliver to the African people.

After initial, imperfect learning, I tend to support the following view : Africa’s future development model must draw lessons from both planned and market economies, incorporate the resilience of local cultures, strengthen statecraft capacity, and pave the way for sovereign, self-reliant growth.

If we go deeper, then Any new African development model should meet three fundamental requirements:

1. Balancing the Roles of the State and the Market:

We should uphold Dr. Nkrumah’s principle of economic sovereignty and explore a mixed economic model. On one hand, public-private partnerships (PPPs) should drive infrastructure projects, with foreign companies required to partner with local enterprises. On the other hand, strategic industries such as mining and telecommunications must remain under national control.

Ethiopia’s experiment with the “developmental state” model serves as a case in point—state-owned enterprises have led infrastructure investments, while private enterprises have energized the market.

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2. Promoting Regional Integration:

Nkrumah’s call for Pan-Africanism and a unified African political community was visionary. And it still serves as guidance for today’s action. Allow me to quote from his speech at the first summit of the Organization of African Unity in 1963:

“Unless we can establish a vast industrial complex in Africa—possible only through African unity—our farmers will remain at the mercy of foreign commodity markets,... Unless we ensure that farmers receive fair prices and access to mature markets, what use are education and industrialization to them? What good is development capital if they cannot achieve fair returns and a higher standard of living? Unless we establish a vast industrial complex in Africa, what do urban workers and farmers crowded onto overworked land gain from political independence? If they still face unemployment or toil in unskilled jobs, what will enable them to enjoy the benefits of education, technical training, energy, and ambition that independence should provide?”

Even today, no one can explain the urgency of this matter better than he did!

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3.Restoring Socialist Values of Social Equity and Public Welfare:

Developing rural areas and reducing urban-rural disparities are essential for upholding socialist values, preserving the roots of civilization. If we took the Chinese lesson, The solution is not urbanization or marketization—it should only be socialist transformation!  Because lessons showed clearly that both pure market and greedy capital do not love rural area, they came only to destroy!

Building on China’s recent experience, Nkrumah’s call for restoring collective ownership within traditional African village communities—grounded in principles of humanitarianism and egalitarianism—was both visionary and justified. Time will prove the wisdom of his ideas.

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At last year’s China-Africa Forum, comrade Xi Jinping emphasized the aspiration to achieve modernization for 2.8 billion people; he means 1.4 billion Chinese plus 1.4 billion Africans! How can we realize this vision of shared future? I see the the answer only lies in second version of Belt and Road Initiative: BRI 2.0.

If BRI 1.0 focused more on hard infrastructure to provide the physical foundation for developing projects, then BRI Version 2.0 must address the soft part of “human and technology foundation” of development: Each investment project should aim at providing eduacational network, technology co-development network, and local supply chain network, in a simultaneously way.

What would this look like? For example, China and Brazil have jointly established an “Agricultural Science and Education Development Center.” in Beijing. My Brazilian comrades from MST and from Tri-Continental Institute, with research associates at Beijing CAU are conducting world class innovation work in field of organic fertilizers, and comrades are looking ways to bring this methodology to Africa for education and help to build local supply chain, then to co-develop local applications to solve real problems.

Another example: As BRICS country, India’s software skills, China’s 5G and AI platforms, Russia’s cybersecurity technology, and Brazil’s big data applications in agriculture and healthcare are all state of art in industry, are mutually complementary. So how about to launch a group of soft BRI projects to set up ICT development hub, in selected Africa countries, to enable local education upgraded and innovation speeded. Such innovation and education hub can carried out by a BRICS university network which we first called to establish last Novermber in a conference discussing the innovation power of Global South as unity. My comrades in MST in Brazil will propose this concept into people’s counsil of BRICS Summit 2025 and push it into resolution.

And by promoting open-sourced ICT and related AI technologies which are the declared mission of China’s government, BRI 2.0 entails soft projects helping Africa continent to reduce dependence on Western technology monopoly.

In roll out of BRI 2.0, Leading Chinese state-owned enterprises should set a positive example, while local chambers of commerce and industry associations should guide Chinese private enterprises toward setting higher ethical standards, beyond obeying of law merely.

Just a few days ago, Chinese media reported the latest remarks by Huawei CEO Mr. Ren, he emphasized that every Huawei investment abroad must create local jobs, promote technological upgrades, and share knowledge transfer, building ground of shared development interests. Huawei is again thinking ahead, leading the way for Chinese companies move into BRI 2.0.

Dear comrades, China has shown the obvious superiority of socialist development model over neo-liberal capitalism and has shown, Dr Nkrumah’s thoughts were insightful and valid! It is our task to carry the lessons learned, to apply them into local conditions in Afirca to meet people’s needs. By doing so we have to carry Mao’s valuable teaching which instructs that true innovation practices regarding scientific reorganization of production and distribution emerge out of mass.

By doing so we also should carry the flag: Socialism require coordinated national,continental and global struggles against capitalism!

VIVA Socialism!

VIVA SMG!

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Thank you!