A Research On Influence Factors To China’s Agricultural Assistance For African Countries By Sending Agricultural Expetrs

After “World War II”, it has become an important international phenomenon to provide assistanceespecially agricultural assistance for the African continent. Overall, the number of providers ofagricultural assistance has been increasing, the areas of assistance have been adjusted gradually, theassistance modalities have been improving, the scale of assistance has b2een expanding and theassistance system has been gradually standardized as well. As one of the countries to provideagricultural assistance to the African continent, China requires a comprehensive and timelyunderstanding of the history and developments of the agricultural assistance from the internationalcommunity to Africa, and learning from their useful experiences and practices. At the same time, weshould sum up our experiences and deficiencies in providing agricultural assistance for Africa, makingthe future agricultural assistance to Africa better accomplish its political, economic and diplomaticmissions.Considering the fact that the foregone agricultural assistance projects could not be truly embeddedinto practical agricultural production of the recipient country, China’s relevant departments observed theprinciple of “teaching people to fish and providing assistance according to their needs” and proposedthe agricultural assistance of sending100senior agricultural experts to Africa through the leaders on theBeijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, where bilateral agreements on sendingsenior agricultural experts were signed between China and33African countries. The implementation ofthe project has achieved good results.On the basis of the analysis of the history and the progress of China’s agricultural assistance toAfrica, this thesis carries out empirical study on the factors that influence the performance of onehundred experts assisting Africa using the primary data and discusses the difficulties and challengesfaced by the overseas experts in the context of the project. Key findings are as follows:(1) Assistance to Africa is pushed by the global trend and has the theoretical basis of internationaleconomics but the forms of assistance may vary with the countries, the time and the techniques. Theproject of one hundred experts assisting Africa of our country has seen preliminary achievementshowever, as it is at the early stage, there is still room for improvement in terms of the managementmodel and forms of assistance etc. This reflects the necessity and practical value of the intensive studyof the effects and influencing factors of this project.(2) Empirical studies show that results of the assistance of overseas experts can be influenced bymultiple factors. Firstly, the Chinese side’s evaluation of the assistance results of the overseas expertshas been basically objective instead of being affected by factors such as the technical titles and agebrackets of the experts. In contrast, the work position, language ability and communication skills andteamwork skills of the overseas experts prove to be key factors while the teamwork ability is mainlydetermined by the professional competence, gender, age bracket and self-confidence of the overseasexperts. Secondly, the foreign side’s evaluation of the assistance results of the experts indicates no significant correlation with the technical title, gender and age factors and is mainly determined by thecommunication and coordination skills of the experts instead. Those experts with better communicationand coordination skills prove more welcome for the foreign side.(3) The dispatch of experts involves multiple parties including the donor country, the recipientcountry, the organizer and the experts and constraints exist on each side. The poor living conditions,under-developed agricultural production and political unrest of African countries and the managementmodel and the selection of experts of the Chinese project are all challenging for us. Regarding thepresent implementation of the project, we should conduct concrete analysis on each specific questiondepending on different countries and different groups of experts, which puts forward higherrequirements for the project management.Based on the findings, this thesis has made4suggestions on sending agricultural experts to Africa:perfecting the policy for sending agricultural experts to Africa, refining an integrated planning forproviding agricultural assistance to Africa, enhancing the capacity building of agricultural expert team,and positively creating a better external conditions for agricultural assistance for Africa. Meanwhile,this thesis also has made3suggestions on the strategy of agricultural assistance for Africa:“teachingpeople to fish and providing assistance according to their needs” should be our unshakable principle inassisting Africa;“making the best of the assistance and facing the future” so as to serve the overallstrategy of the country should be the direction of future agricultural assistance for Africa; andagricultural assistance should be the pilot strategy of Chinese agriculture to go to Africa.