SHARM EL-SHEIKH: African foreign ministers on Monday welcomed a pledge by China to offer the continent 10 billion dollars in concessional loans, but said regional cooperation was also vital.

‘Africa is hungry for development. Africa has lagged behind for too long (and) has always been treated and judged with very, very lopsided standards,’ Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula told AFP.

‘The standards that Europe has been imposing on Africa are not the same standards Europe imposes on Eastern Europe, for example,’ he said.

‘And here the Chinese are coming and saying: ‘You want a railway line? We have the money and the technology to build it for you.’ Who will not take that?’

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao pledged to give Africa 10 billion dollars in loans at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation which opened on Sunday in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Wen said the new measures would focus on reducing poverty and assistance in infrastructure and agriculture, and said China was also vowing to remove tariffs on most goods from the least-developed African countries.

‘All these are areas of critical need for Africa,’ Wetangula said.

Sierra Leone Foreign Minister Zainab Bangura echoed the view, saying: ‘We have benefited extremely’ from cooperation with China.

But both ministers also said they hoped to see more cooperation on the continent itself.

‘What we’d like is regional and sub-Saharan integration,’ Bangura said. ‘We should not turn this forum into bilateral issues... but issues focused on regional economies.’

The forum was to end later on Monday after a series of meetings between Chinese delegations and teams from around 50 African countries drawing up an action plan for the next three years.  —AFP