(Yicai) Aug. 30 -- China will step up efforts to deepen partnerships with African countries to promote the high-quality development of the Belt and Road Initiative, according to an official report.

China and Africa will continue to advance BRI cooperation in fields such as infrastructure construction, healthcare, green development, digital economy, and artificial intelligence, according to the China-African Countries Joint Construction of BRI Development Report released yesterday by the Office of the Leading Group for Promoting the BRI and the National Development and Reform Commission.

"China has signed memorandums of understanding with 52 African countries and the African Union on jointly developing the BRI," Xu Jianping, director of the NDRC's Department of Regional Opening-Up, said at a press conference.

In the future, China will help African countries foster more high-tech talents and share its experience on scientific and technological innovation with them to co-build an open, fair, equal, and non-discriminatory environment for technological development and drive more sci-tech achievements to be applied and show results in Africa, Xu pointed out.

China and African countries have been jointly building the BRI for 11 years.

So far, Chinese firms participated in the building and upgrading of 10,000 kilometers of railways, 100,000 km of highways, nearly 1,000 bridges, almost 100 ports, 66,000 km of power transmission and distribution lines, and 150,000 km of backbone communication network in Africa.

China has zero tariffs on 98 percent of taxable products from 27 undeveloped African countries. Last year alone, foreign trade between China and Africa reached a record high of USD282.1 billion. China's direct investment in Africa exceeded USD40 billion as of the end of last year.

Chinese companies have also built clean energy projects in areas such as photovoltaic energy, wind power, hydropower, and biomass in more than 40 African countries, said Dong Xiang, deputy director of the National Energy Administration's international division. They added 120 million kilowatts of installed green power capacity and built 66,000 km of grid lines.

Editors: Zhang Yushuo, Futura Costaglione