Sino-African Initiative
Sister Cities International’s Sino-African Initiative (SAI) is a two-year program funded through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. SAI is designed to address the manner in which Chinese, African, and U.S. cities can collaborate on economic development and urban poverty issues in Africa. By working with Chinese, African, and U.S. public diplomacy networks, local municipal governments, and businesses, this initiative seeks to create strategies that ensure development and poverty alleviation projects address community needs, safeguard human rights and safety, and promote transparent business practices and government accountability. Activities for this program include research and program design, exchanges, and webinar and conference sessions.
Research and Design
This initiative begins with one year of in-depth research including analysis, interviews, surveys, and discussions to understand key issue areas and create resources and guidelines targeted at developing trilateral pilot programs for Chinese, African, and US sister cities. The programs will encompass business and corporate social responsibility, higher education, African municipal development, and citizen diplomacy.
SAI will conclude at the end of the second year with a feasibility report. The focus of the report will include best practices in creating Sino-African-U.S. trilateral sister city partnerships and multilateral cooperation for economic development and urban poverty alleviation programs.
Exchange
During the second year, pilot projects involving U.S., African, and Chinese communities will be developed based on research from the first year.
Conferences and Webinars
A series of webinars and a major conference will take place to help launch the pilot programs. The webinars will provide additional resources to help cities through the application process. The conference will provide a platform for participants to interact and to solidify their projects.
SAI builds upon Sister Cities International’s African Urban Poverty Alleviation Program (AUPAP), designed to address urban poverty in 25 African cities through water, health, and sanitation projects developed collaboratively by U.S. and African sister city programs. AUPAP is successfully completing its third year of programming, bringing together participation and support from the private sector, non-governmental organizations, community-based organizations, municipal governments and traditional leaders in Africa to implement projects and provide sustained technical assistance.
For more information on SAI, please contact Lula Chen at nchen@sister-cities.org.
