Cameroon and Africa visited the beautiful city on July 30 to tap from its growth strategies.
Cameroon like other African countries has engaged in setting up economic or industrial zones with the view of attracting investments that can lift the country and continent’s development to considerable heights. How far the projects have gone and what has been achieved thus far could be adjusted for efficiency if experience from where industrial zones have succeeded outstandingly is well studied and adapted to suit local realities.
Suzhou in Jiangsu Province of China, that enjoys the fame as “Paradise on Earth” is by every means a role model in the efficiency of industrial zones. Some 22 years ago, the city, dwellers say, was a rice field but today stands in a class of its own in industrialisation. Suzhou Industrial Park borne out of China-Singapore cooperation with its operation mechanism, preferential policies, practical experience of planning, implementation, infrastructure construction and personnel training caught the attention of Africa on July 30, 2016. Scores of African Ministers and others ranking as such who attended the Coordinator’s meeting on the implementation of the follow up actions of the 2015 Johannesburg summit on China-Africa cooperation went visiting the zone. Cameroon’s Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Louis Paul Motaze alongside the country’s Ambassador to China, Martin Mpana took part in the awareness-oriented trip. The visit was in line with the State Council’s approval in 2015 wherein the Industrial Park became the first to carry out comprehensive trial of opening up and innovation in China.
Yang Zhiping, Director of the Suzhou Industrial Park, took the visitors through the long history, strategies and successes of the area insisting at every moment on the importance of integrating research and development. Industrial or economic zones, he like other speakers said, utterly need interwoven infrastructure (roads, water, electricity, telecommunications...) to live up to the billing. Countries too absolutely need good legislations and their enforcement mechanisms to give existing and potential investors calm minds to ‘risk’ their money.
Suzhou, an equivalence of a Division in Cameroon going by China’s administrative setup, had a permanent resident population of 10.6 million people with an industrial output of 3.57 trillion Yuan in 2015. That it registered a GDP of 1.45 trillion Yuan last year, contributed 156.08 billion Yuan to the general public budget revenue as well as recorded 305.35 billion dollars in import and trade volumes speaks of her economic vitality thanks to the industrial or economic zones. Her development planning model can be replicated elsewhere for good yields too especially at a time the actors are ready to share their strategies and success stories!
