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ADDIS ABABA, May 31-- The China-Africa Comprehensive Strategic and Cooperative Partnership platform has provided Africa a multi-directional model of cooperation, said former Ethiopian foreign minister Seyoum Mesfin. "China's model of engagement, which is different from the western framework or cooperation, brings new dynamics, enabling African states to have choices between the two or even to craft a strategy combining both," said Seyoum, who is Chairman of the Centre for Dialogue, Research and Cooperation (CDRC), an independent Ethiopia-based noNPRofit think tank. Seyoum, who was also Ethiopia's former minister of foreign affairs, made the remarks during the Belt and Road Dialogue for China-Africa Cooperation, which was jointly organized by the African Union (AU) and the Chinese Mission to the AU in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa late Thursday. "Only a comparative analysis of the situation before the China-Africa cooperation began, in contrast with the new trend, suffices to show how much the cooperation matters," Seyoum said "We should constantly remind ourselves that the colonial escapade left the African continent with meager infrastructure, developed largely to facilitate the desire to appropriate resources and ascertain extended rule," he said. "This centuries-old exploitation not only left Africans impoverished and ignorant, but Africa was also pegged politically and economically as dependent on these unfairly organized asymmetric relations," he added. | 
