Online Reporter
Walter Nyamukondiwa in Yinchuan, China
Seventeen journalists drawn from mainstream media houses across Africa have arrived in China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region for a week-long workshop that will unravel one of the success stories in poverty alleviation through the transformation of a desert region into a thriving agricultural and industrial economy.
The African Mainstream Media Workshop brings together reporters and editors from across the continent for an itinerary that spans ecological restoration sites, resettlement communities, vineyards and e-commerce hubs.
It also includes, high-level dialogues on poverty reduction and international seminars on China’s development philosophy.
At the centre of the programme is Minning Town in Yongning County, the settlement built from scratch in the 1990s to resettle families from Ningxia’s arid south, was developed in partnership with China’s coastal Fujian Province under a pairing-assistance model that has since become a national template.
Delegates are scheduled to tour the town’s landmark pavilion, its e-commerce workshops and the residential community that grew out of the resettlement effort.
The visit will also take journalists to the China-Central Asia Cooperation Center for Combating Desertification, where decades of sand-fixing and land reclamation work have spawned vineyards, wineries, and horticultural farms now credited with lifting thousands of households out of poverty.
The team will tour the Yuanshi Vineyard and the Beryl Yanhongzishu Goji Estate where Goji berries are being grown resulting in down stream value addition enterprises.
After the field visits, journalists will attend the opening of an international seminar on Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and its relevance to the world, followed by dialogues comparing poverty reduction experiences across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
A tour of the Ningxia Broadcasting and Television Station’s Silk Road International Communication Center and a visit to the centuries-old Xixia Imperial Tombs have been scheduled.
The two sites link the region’s ancient history to its modern reinvention.
Journalists will have firsthand exposure to the coordinating role of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the mobilisation of local communities, and sustained government investment, which have been credited with turning one of China’s harshest landscapes into a case study being studied beyond its borders.
The region’s journey from sandstorm to vineyard offers as a possible model for Africa’s own struggles with land degradation and rural poverty.
