China’s new president Xi Jinping will this week attend a meeting of BRICS leaders in Durban, South Africa, which starts on Tuesday, before making a final stop in Congo as the world’s second biggest economy looks to Africa for natural resources.

Jinping arrived in the East African country of Tanzania on Sunday on the first leg of his three-country African tour, which is clearly aimed at tapping into economic growth potential of the continent.

South Africa’s ambassador to the BRICS (Brazil, China, Russia, India & South Africa) summit, Anil Sooklal, told South Africa’s Eye Witness News that the launch of a development finance institution (bank) would be on the agenda during the meeting of the leaders of the world’s leading emerging economies in Durban.

Finance ministers from the five countries will reportedly table their respective country reports on the likelihood of the launching a development bank. The bank is likely to begin with a $50 billion dollar seed capital. It is understood that each country would provide $10 billion dollars to the venture.

According to International Business Times (IBT), Jinping made his first official international trip to Moscow last week, meeting President Vladimir Putin of Russia and discussing relations between that nation and China and a major oil deal that includes supporting the construction of a natural gas pipeline between the two countries.

But China is facing the tough mission of persuading Africa that it will advance Sino-African relations in a “symbiotic manner,” not just strip the resource-rich nations of Africa of their raw materials and flood them with Chinese-made goods, the  IBT reported.

“China and Africa are one family,” Xi told the IBT reporter Dar-es-Salaam, citing the case of the Tanzam railway, a 1.850-kilometer (1.100-mile) line between Tanzania and Zambia constructed with the assistance of China in the 1960s.

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