China-Africa Internet Development and Cooperation Forum 2025

China hosted the 2025 China-Africa Internet Development and Cooperation Forum on September 28, 2025, in Xiamen, bringing together approximately 400 representatives from government agencies, universities, think tanks and news media from China and 32 African countries. The forum, themed “Building a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace and Writing a New Chapter in China-Africa Digital Cooperation” — drawing on Xi Jinping’s foreign policy notion of “shared destiny” as applied to the internet — was organized by the Cyberspace Administration of China (國家互聯網信息辦公室) and the Fujian Provincial People’s Government (福建省人民政府). Chinese officials unveiled the 2025-2026 Action Plan for Building a China-Africa Cyberspace Community with a Shared Future (携手构建中非网络空间命运共同体行动计划) and established the “China-Africa Internet Enterprise Cooperation Network” (中国在非洲互联网企业合作网络), while announcing continued training programs on cybersecurity and digital economy. The forum featured four sub-forums addressing digital divide reduction and digital transformation, artificial intelligence development and governance, cybersecurity and data governance, and online media cooperation. State media coverage reported that African representatives “endorsed” China’s proposed cooperation initiatives, and said that the forum aligned with African countries’ digital transformation needs and expressing willingness to deepen collaboration with China in digital economy, cybersecurity, data protection, artificial intelligence governance and online media sectors. Such initiatives are generally organized, announced and hosted in a unilateral manner by Chinese government entities, even as the discourse stresses them as bilateral or multilateral in nature. The Xiamen meeting also presented 7 participants from African countries (called “friends”) with certificates under “China Storytelling Partnerships” ( 中国故事共创会), which media said recognized those who work “to tell China’s stories, spread Chinese culture, and show the world a real, three-dimensional, and comprehensive China.” The language echoes China’s official policy on external propaganda.