Editor's notes: The eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) will be held on Nov 29-30 in Dakar, Senegal.

With the theme of "Deepen China-Africa Partnership and Promote Sustainable Development to Build a China-Africa Community with a Shared Future in the New Era", the conference will review and assess the follow-up implementation of the outcomes of the 2018 FOCAC Beijing Summit as well as the joint China-Africa response to COVID-19, and chart the course for China-Africa relations for the next three years and beyond.

During the past three years, China has been cooperating with African countries in fields such as green development, trade facilitation, and infrastructure connectivity, which are among major initiatives proposed at the 2018 FOCAC Beijing Summit.

Let's take a look at some examples of China-Africa cooperation in combating climate change and protecting environment.

Clean energy

Around 40 percent of households in sub-Saharan Africa are not connected to power grid, and many of them are powered by solar panels made in China.

Thanks to an off-grid photovoltaic (PV) power station project undertaken by China Electric Power Equipment and Technology Co Ltd, a subsidiary of State Grid Corporation of China in Somali region, Ethiopia, nearly 6,000 people from over 2,000 families in Qorile village near the project had access to clean electricity as the village was brightly lit in the second half of 2020.

The completion of the off-grid PV power station has changed the lives of people in Qorile village. In the past, the only electrical appliance of most of the families in the village was the mobile phone, and the hospital in the village relied on diesel generators for electricity.

After the PV power station was built, the village installed road lamps, and villagers started to buy higher-power home appliances like electric fans and televisions.

The project has promoted the implementation of Ethiopia's plan to bring power to all citizens by 2025, said Seleshi Bekele, Ethiopia's minister of water, irrigation and electricity.

The off-grid PV power station project in the Somali region is among the first batch of the demonstration projects of the Lighting Africa program funded by the World Bank. It is also the pilot project of the program in Ethiopia.

Likewise, clean energy is applied in the field of railway construction.

Starting to operate in January 2018, the Chinese-built 752.7 km Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway is the first cross-border railway electrified by clean energy in Africa. Besides providing development opportunities for related countries and regions, the railway's energy-saving and environmentally friendly operation has also become the best footnote for the joint construction of a green Belt and Road project.

The railway has played an important role during the COVID-19 pandemic. By May 2021, the Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway had ferried more than 1.5 million tons of pandemic-prevention goods and industrial raw materials.

Agriculture

Agriculture is one of the most important economic sectors for the continent, employing the majority of the population and accounting for 14 percent of GDP in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a report by Oxford Business Group, a global research and advisory company.

Since 2011, the Chinese government has been promoting green agricultural technology in Africa and training talents by building agricultural technology demonstration centers, dispatching experts, and providing scholarships for African students studying in China.

For example, Juncao technology, which can be used for producing mushroom animal feed, and biomass fuel, has been promoted in Rwanda to help local people gain access to healthy food sources and improve their livelihoods.

The technology does not use arable land, and it is low-cost, easy to operate and environmentally friendly. Moreover, when used to produce clean energy, Juncao can effectively help address the challenges of climate change, because it has a high conversion rate of solar energy.

"The power generated from the burning of Juncao grown on one hectare of land is equivalent to that from more than 50 tons of coal. A ton of dried jumbo Juncao can produce over 450 cubic meters of biogas. Since the amount of CO2 that Juncao absorbs during its growth offsets the amount it emits in burning, it has zero emission and zero pollution and is, thus, a source of clean energy that can help address the challenges of climate change," said then-Ambassador Liu Jieyi.

Chinese experts in Rwanda said that mushrooms turn a profit quicker than traditional crops grown in the country, earning as much as 80,500 Rwandan francs (about $100) per square meter after just eight days, compared to six months needed for sorghum or maize, according to a report by CGTN.

Emmanuel Ahimana from Rwanda founded his Juncao company in 2016, and as of last year, the company's production capacity of mushroom tubes has increased from about 1,500 to 2,000 per month at the beginning to the current volume of 10,000 tubes per month.

One mushroom tube costs Ahimana only several hundred Rwandan francs (100 Rwandan francs is approximately $0.1), while mushrooms each tube cultivates could be sold at several times the amount.

Juncao technology has contributed to job creation, food security and generating income for rural communities in Rwanda and has played an important role in tackling malnutrition in the country, said Josiane Umubyeyi, a research technician and acting coordinator of Juncao technology at the Rwanda Agriculture Board.

Climate change may have a positive impact on rice production in some areas. However, the vast majority of climate change impacts and the overall impact of climate change on rice are likely to be negative.

According to a report by the International Food Policy Research Institute, rice productivity will reduce by 15 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa, and by 2050 rice prices will increase between 32 and 37 percent as a result of climate change.

Luckily, due to the improved irrigation system and effective management, yields at the Wanbao Mozambique farm in the Xai-Xai district of the southern province of Gaza have been increasing steadily, which helps the country counteract the negative effects on rice production caused by climate change.

They have reached as high as 9 metric tons a hectare in recent years - five times as high as the levels managed by local farmers, said Wei Shunlong, a manager of the rice farm that's known as Wanbao Mozambique. It takes its name from a Chinese company that was engaged to work on the project.

The Wanbao rice farm, now covering 20,000 hectares, was created with investment from the China-Africa Development Fund in Beijing and is leased by the Mozambique government.

Today, it stands as China's biggest crop investment project in Africa, contributing to food security in Mozambique with its high rice yields. It has also served to spread advanced farming techniques among local farmers. Most of the farmers engaged with the Wanbao Mozambique farm are local villagers. They grow rice under various arrangements, such as farmland plots allocated under contracts, and receive guidance from Chinese experts such as Wei.

New platforms built for cooperation

China has so far signed agreements with five African countries, including South Africa and Ethiopia, and since 2015 it has helped train over 900 Africans through workshops on urban environmental management and water pollution control, according to Huang Runqiu, minister of ecology and environment.

China has also signed 14 deals on tackling climate change with 13 African nations since 2011, and has donated a large amount of equipment to help countries in the continent cope with climate change, including more than 10,000 sets of solar photovoltaic power generation equipment and launching a small satellite.

In 2018, Namibia and China signed an agreement on the establishment of the Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Receiving Station through the Chinese grant funding system.

The station will enable Namibia to obtain satellite remote sensing data covering its land and sea territory to conduct research on domestic natural resources, agriculture, disaster mitigation and addressing climate change, etc.

The station includes antenna feed subsystem, channel subsystem, data recording and transmission subsystem and control subsystem. Besides, China will also provide technical training to 10 local engineers and send experts to Namibia for joint research and development.

In November last year, the China-Africa Environmental Cooperation Center was launched to increase China's collaboration with African nations on environmental issues.

Animal protection

Wildlife pathways were built to pave space for the construction of the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway line.

Part of the railway is elevated on viaducts, allowing wildlife to pass without risk of injury. The rest is elevated on embankments, and six underpasses have been constructed to allow wildlife to cross.

The engineers of the railway designed the wildlife paths to ease migration of wildlife in the areas.

There were earlier fears by environmental advocates that the new construction would greatly impact the wildlife population in national parks.

"The way the elephants are behaving today indicate they are at home and that the new pathways do not interfere with them at all," said Margaret Mwakima, then principal secretary of State Department of Natural Resources of Kenya.

"The conservation and sustainable management of wildlife and habitats are crucial to the country's long term economic growth and development," she added.

Xinhua, CGTN, Qiushi Journal contributed to this story.