By Charles Onunaiju
As Nigeria implements tough economic reforms with an unmistakable focus to recovery and steady growth trajectories of her economy, seeking market opportunities and investment flows from abroad are vital strategies for accomplishing the aims and objectives of the reform efforts. It is therefore, behoves of the reform managers and especially those in strategic policy circles to scurry around policy frameworks of international partners to identify opportunities that can be translated into tangible contributions to national economic and social objectives.
The just concluded 4th plenary session of the Central Committee of the governing Communist Party of China, whose deliberations centered on the 15th edition of the country’s Five-year Development plan, due to go into full effect and implementation for the next five years, beginning from 2026, has considerable implications for Nigeria’s international market access and investment drive.
China’s Five-year Development Plan, a long standing governance practice of the country has been functioning since 1953 as a reliable compass that have guided and continues to guide the broad roadmap of her social and economic directions. The political integrity, efficiency and competence of the leadership of the governing party has ensured that the plan is not a hollow ritual, but a process aligned to the realities of the times with a clear objective to accomplish specific goals that makes practical contributions to the improvement in the quality of life of the people.
As China economy of scale has exponentially grown with a contribution of about 30% to the global economy; her Five-year Development plan have both implications and ramifications not only to her economy but more crucially to strategic partners. As Nigeria and China partnership was declared comprehensively strategic, following the successful State visit of President Bola Tinubu in September last year, China new economic roadmap spelt out in the 15th edition of the five yearly Development plan and which was extensively deliberated and approved for implementation at the 4th Plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the governing CPC, last month, have enormous potential to give effects to some key aspects of Nigeria’s economic reform objectives which consist of increase in export of non-oil and value added products on a steady and expansionary trajectory.
A key aspect of the China’s 15th Five-year Development Plan, the “Initiative to open China wider, promote innovative development of trade, create greater space for a two-way investment cooperation and pursue high-quality Belt and Road cooperation” connects to the imperative of a reliable market destination for many African countries including Nigeria. Within the framework of this, China “would boost consumption, expand effective investment and eliminate bottle-necks and obstacles hindering the development of a unified national market”.
To strengthen a unified national market that is opened “wider” is a boon to Nigeria and her hunger for stable and reliable market access without the volatility of politically motivated disruptions, consisting of erecting tariff walls. With a guarantee of a huge and stable market, Nigeria can drive a targeted policy to incentivize critical sectors oriented to leverage the concessional access to China’s huge market and returns from such venture would ameliorate the situation of foreign exchange and further the value of the local currency against major international currencies.
At the conclusion of the 4th Edition of the China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo in June, the Chinese government took the measure to eliminate tariffs on quality products from the 53 African countries including Nigeria that maintains diplomatic relations with Beijing. China stated her readiness “through negotiating and signing the agreement of China-Africa Economic Partnership for Shared Development to expand the zero tariff treatment for 100% tariff lines to all African countries …, welcome quality products from Africa to the Chinese market. For the least developed countries in Africa, on top of the zero tariff treatment for 100% tariff lines announced at the 2024 Beijing Summit of FOCAC, China will roll out measures on market access, inspection and quarantine and custom clearance to boost trade in goods; enhance skills and technical training and the promotion of quality goods”.
The robust mechanism already in existence to support and incentivize Nigeria’s access to China’s market has been further reinforced by the outlines of China’s 15th Five-year Development plan which guarantees not only a wider access but also the advantage of a consolidated national unified market scaled up not only by the healthy and efficient interaction of demand and supply but an increasing consumer spending and coordinates in physical assets and human capital”.
While a “unified national market” would hedge China against politically motivated de-couplings and other trade restrictive manoeuvres, it would be the single largest national market in the world that is open, stable and predictable.
China’s high quality development would also feature the transformation of work and its outputs, through the development of the new quality productive forces. Nigeria and other African Countries through the framework of “an all-weather China-Africa community with a shared future for the new era” are well positioned to leverage the advantage of China’s massive domestic economy of scale, that would be given greater scope through the implementation of the 15th Five-year Development plan.
In the explanatory note to the 4th Plenary session, General Secretary Xi Jinping noted that 15th Five-year plan will serve as a crucial stage in building on past successes to break new ground for basically achieving socialist modernization. Last year, at the Summit of China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing, President Xi Jinping urged the two sides to jointly advance modernization that puts the people first”, pledging that “China will work vigorously with Africa to promote personal training, poverty reductions and employment, enhance the sense of gain, happiness and security of the people in the course of modernization and ensure that all will benefit from the process”.
The core of China’s Socialist modernization is to ensure that people’s ever increasing needs for a better life is continuously attended to and the content of this dynamic and ever evolving process is also providing more opportunities to the world and especially Africa, with whom China shares commitment to a modernization that works for all.
The 4th Plenum devoted exclusively to the 15th Five-year plan was empathic to the commitment that China “should advance reform and development through greater openness and seek to share opportunities and achieve common development with the rest of the world.” Nigeria in leveraging on her unique partnership with China that is comprehensively strategic should avail herself of this crucial roadmap to the social and economic development of the country in the next five years as contained in the 15th Five-year plan, and apply herself to finding a niche within it that correspond to the need of her economy in a framework of win-win cooperation and mutual benefits.
Interestingly, Chinese public diplomacy in Nigeria led by ambassador Yu Dunhai is devoted to clarifying and elaborating the opportunities in the bilateral relation between the two sides and the wider China-Africa cooperation. The 15th Five-year plan as elaborated by the 4th Plenary of the 20th Central Committee of the governing Communist Party of China (CPC) raised all the big issues at the heart of the country’s social and economic goals and transformation but also tasked itself to “work harder to ensure and improve pubic well-being and promote common prosperity for all”, and “in line with the principle of doing everything within our means, we must ensure that public services are inclusive, meet essential needs and provide a cushion for those most in need, while working to resolve the pressing difficulties and problems that concern the people most”. The lessons offered by this solemn avowal should never be lost to managers of economic reforms anywhere in the world, including Nigeria that any meaningful economic policy must provide an ambit for social inclusion, which consists in solving people’s most existential needs which in themselves are major contributors to national security and stability.
Despite the wind of the neo-liberal economic reforms that swept away periodic Development plans in most of African countries, including Nigeria, in the 1990s and after, the framework is not discredited and China has demonstrated that when social and economic development plans, proceeds from the reality of any country’s unique national condition, aligned to resolve specific problems , designed to serve practical purpose and addressed to real needs, it can and should be a powerful directory illuminating the path ways to understanding the opportunities of the times and how to turn it to real advantages for the country and its people.
Mr. Onunaiju is a Public Commentator on International Affairs based in Abuja.
