On May 18, "Shine Your Light" CSR event, a collaborative charity endeavour planned and initiated by China-Africa Development Fund (CADFund), Hisense Group, and Mozambique Wanbao Agricultural Park, was held in Cape Town.
Mr. You Wenze, Consul General of China to Cape Town, Mr. Shen Bo, Councilor of Cape Town, Allister Lightburn, Mr Jerry Liu, Vice President of Hisense International and other guests attended the event.
Mr. Song Lei, Chairman of the China-Africa Development Fund, and Guo Li, Director of the South-South Industrial Cooperation Centre of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UCSSIC China), delivered speeches. Teachers and student representatives from local community schools attended the event.
With the country experiencing rolling blackouts brought on by loadshedding and South Africa's energy crisis, Hisense SA, jointly invested by the China-Africa Development Fund and Hisense Group, actively fulfilled its social responsibility by donating 800 sets of solar table lamps to the students in schools surrounding Atlantis, to align with the continuous goal of upliftment of the community in which the factory is based.
Grade 11 and 12 students, who are in the process of making career decisions, were invited to receive the lamps and be given the opportunity to experience a factory tour. The students said that their first visit was exciting and broadened their horizons.
At the same time, the Mozambique Wanbao Agricultural Park, invested by the China-Africa Development Fund donated a batch of locally grown high-quality rice to the students, aiming to increase the intake of high-quality protein and improve the nutritional diet for local teenagers.
More than 20 local students visited Hisense factory, during the visit Hisense announced a scholarship funding plan. The students were greatly encouraged by the announcement and expressed a willingness to work hard to learn and ultimately contribute to social development.
The Chairman of CADFund, Mr. Song Lei, said that during the past 16 years since its establishment, CADFund has been committed to promoting friendship and cooperation between China and Africa.
While driving local employment and fostering economic development through strategic investments, the Fund places great emphasis on deep integration and co-development with local communities, actively fulfilling its social responsibilities, ensuring that the benefits of development reach a wider spectrum of African individuals. The Hisense South Africa Appliance Industrial Park and Mozambique Wanbao Agricultural Park serve as prime examples of such collaborative efforts.
As Hisense has evolved from a "Chinese brand" to a household name in South Africa today, Atlantis has also transformed into a significant production hub for electronics and electrical appliances within the country and further been elevated to the status of a national Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in South Africa.
A similar endeavour unfolded in Mozambique, where the CADFund ventured into the Wanbao Agricultural Park project aimed at rice production and distribution in the region.
Embracing the collaborative model of "company+farmers," the Wanbao project extends comprehensive support to local farmers, including technical guidance and equipment services throughout the entire process. As a result, the rice yield among cooperative farmers has witnessed a significant surge from the initial 300 kg/mu to an impressive average of 700 kg/mu, with some achieving remarkable harvests exceeding 1,000 kg/mu.
This extraordinary progress represents a three to fivefold increase in per-mu production, bolstering the region's food supply capacity, uplifting the livelihoods of farming households and improving the dietary structure and nutritional well-being of the local community, especially the children.
In March 2019, following the devastating tropical cyclone "Idai," the Wanbao project supplied approximately 3,000 tons of rice to the World Food Programme (WFP) at a reduced price, jointly addressing the urgent need for food assistance in the aftermath of the catastrophe.
Mr. Guoli, director of UCSSIC China said that today’s world is facing multiple challenges including food insecurity, energy crises, climate change, financial instability and post-pandemic recovery. All these added up together make it more difficult to attain the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. This event is a positive response to the food crisis and the energy crisis, which fully reflects the spirit of South South cooperation.
The establishment of the China-Africa Development Fund is an important measure of practical cooperation with Africa announced by the Chinese government during the Beijing summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2006. It aims to encourage and support Chinese enterprises to invest in Africa, and is undertaken by the China Development Bank, with a total scale of 10 billion US dollars.
The Fund adheres to the concept of sincerity, real results, amity and good faith in its cooperation with Africa, operates in accordance with the principle of commercialization, without increasing Africa's debt burden, strengthens Africa's own development capacity in a market-oriented way by investing capital in specific projects, so as to promote the development of China-Africa cooperation.
By the end of April 2023, the Fund has committed to invest a total of over USD 6.6 billion across 39 African nations, with a notable USD 5 billion already deployed, while mobilizing a significant USD 31 billion from Chinese enterprises to finance projects in infrastructure, digital economy, production capacity cooperation, agriculture and people's livelihood, energy and minerals etc.