What The UK Can Learn From China About Running An Africa Summit

The United Kingdom hosted its first Africa summit (Jan. 20), welcoming around 15 African heads of state to London.

The UK-Africa Investment Summit 2020 is the latest in a series of what are coming to be known as “Africa-Plus-One” summits, referring to the idea of several African countries plus one non-African country.

The first summit of this kind kicked off with France back in 1972, followed by Japan in 1993, and the US tried one in 2014 during Obama’s presidency.  Most recently even Russia had an Africa summit last October.

However, none of these have matched the scale and interest of the China-Africa summits, which kicked off 20 years ago.

At the last one in 2018, twice as many African presidents attended the Beijing summit as attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

If other countries, including the UK, are interested in generating the kind