Initiative hailed as translating China's path to growth into global public good

When Keturah Ovio looks back on her entrepreneurial journey of building the digital rails of commerce in Africa, she finds that a China-sponsored training program was both validating and inspirational in accelerating her career.

As the founder and CEO of Dukka, a platform that helps small merchants improve transaction efficiency and access financial services in Nigeria, Ovio has been navigating a complex business environment with limited access to networks and cross-market insights.

Ovio said her participation in the China Merchants Group's C-Star Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program in 2024 was exactly what she needed at that time.

The program is an overseas public welfare initiative that offers platform support, resource connections and growth guidance to young African entrepreneurs.

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Learning about Chinese entrepreneurs such as Jack Ma and the early founders of China Merchants Group, who built their businesses from humble beginnings through sheer persistence, reinforced her belief that long-term entrepreneurship is "tangible and achievable".

"China provides a strong example of what is possible when digital systems are built at scale and adopted widely," she said.

Ovio believes that programs like C-Star help African entrepreneurs "see the world through a different lens".

"They expose participants to new ways of thinking, new business environments and new models for building enduring companies," she said.

They also create space for the exchange of ideas and help entrepreneurs expand their networks by connecting them with peers, experts and institutions they may not otherwise encounter, she added.

C-Star is not a one-off workshop. Since its launch in 2022, the program has provided training to more than 1,500 young entrepreneurs from 27 countries, with over 500 participants engaged in online training.

It is one of more than 1,800 programs in the Global Development Project Pool, a practical implementation platform under the Global Development Initiative.

This year marks the fifth anniversary of the initiative. In September 2021, President Xi Jinping put forward the initiative at the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Since then, the GDI has gradually provided a practical framework for renewing global cooperation on shared development, and has scaled up inputs.

In 2022, China upgraded the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund and increased its total funding to $4 billion.

The GDI has so far mobilized over $23 billion, with more than 1,800 cooperation projects carried out under the initiative.

Through the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund, China has worked with more than 20 international organizations to implement over 100 trilateral projects in more than 50 countries.

The Group of Friends of the GDI, established in 2022, now comprises more than 80 countries.

From technological cooperation to capacity building, from poverty reduction and education to the digital economy, from high-yield rice to fungus-based processing, and from child nutrition and health to women's economic empowerment, GDI cooperation has delivered tangible benefits and strengthened local development capabilities, observers said.

Chen Kanghuai, a brand director of the C-Star program, said that as a vivid example of "teaching people how to fish", the program offers targeted and sustainable support for young African entrepreneurs through full-cycle training, aiming to help their ventures actually take root and thrive.

Meanwhile, by aligning with Chinese and African industrial supply chains, it helps overseas enterprises enter the Chinese market while supporting Chinese companies looking to expand into Africa, he said.

Zhou Taidong, deputy director of the Center for International Knowledge on Development, said that through concrete projects such as C-Star under the GDI, China is trying to translate its own development experience into a global public good.

Zhou said that the initiative demonstrates the vision of pursuing the common good, harmony among nations and mutual benefit.

In the five years since its launch, the GDI has increasingly been viewed as a meaningful effort to bring development back to the center of global governance, at a time when geopolitical tensions risk pushing it to the margins, Zhou said.

"It shows China's responsible attitude toward benefiting the whole world," he said.

Zhou noted that this approach differs from the traditional international cooperation model driven by geopolitical rivalry, and shifts from a donor-recipient logic toward a more partnership-based framework.

Karin Costa Vazquez, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for China and Globalization and a scholar at Fudan University, said the initiative also has created space for more constructive engagement with Global South concerns.

Compared with traditional development frameworks, GDI-aligned cooperation tends to be less procedurally heavy and more responsive to government-defined priorities.

Its principle of "no political strings attached" has resonated strongly with the Global South, particularly among countries that view conditionality in traditional aid models as intrusive or misaligned with domestic realities, she added.

Vazquez said the initiative has helped move South-South cooperation from a rhetorical concept to a structured platform with real policy dialogue and technical exchange.

Despite the GDI's progress, both experts acknowledged that the broader development landscape is under significant strain: Geopolitical tensions are increasingly crowding out development from the center of global governance, financing gaps are widening, and multilateral cooperation is fragmenting.

Zhou said that these challenges risk eroding the consensus for cooperation and raising the cost of development financing.

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Even so, he still sees the GDI as a pathway to help bridge development gaps by prioritizing development, strengthening South-South cooperation and promoting more results-oriented, project-based collaboration.

Vazquez said the initiative's long-term credibility depends on delivery.

"The legitimacy of the GDI is not decided by narratives, but by outcomes on the ground," she added.

Zhou stressed the need for the GDI to evolve from an initiative-driven framework toward a more institutionalized framework driven by mechanisms and projects, in order to enhance its long-term effectiveness.

He also called for greater coordination between the GDI and other regional cooperation mechanisms as well as multilateral platforms, to improve the efficiency of the projects and reduce the overlap of such mechanisms.

Contact the writers at zhoujin@chinadaily.com.cn