Africa CDC Headquarters
Location: African Village, south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Lead Architects: (Government of China)
The headquarters of the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention is scheduled to begin construction in 2021, and expected to be completed by the end of 2023. The site of the proposed complex “covers an area of 90,000 sqm” (40,000 sqm of which will be built up). Facilities include: an emergency operation centre, a data centre, laboratory, resource centre, briefing rooms, training centre, conference centre, offices, and expatriate apartments, all to be constructed, furnished and equipped by the Government of China” (Africa CDC Press Release).
The land for the project was provided by the Government of Ethiopia. The project had been proposed years ago, and the African Union had been speaking to various donor agencies and countries about funding the construction. China, during the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), pledged to support the African Union with a number of construction projects including this one.
Representatives of the Africa Union and the Government of China held a groundbreaking ceremony on 14th December 2020 for the new Africa CDC headquarters construction “despite protests from the United States” (South China Morning Post) The United States had raised concerns, as usual, about China’s continued ‘aid and support’ engagement in Africa which prior to their entry was the reserve of former colonising nations such as the United Kingdom, global “superpowers” such as the United States and Russia, and other European nations.
The China Africa Project quotes “ an unnamed Trump administration official” who spoke to the Financial Times in February, 2020 who claimed that the Africa CDC headquarters “is a threat to Africa. Africa has vast amounts of genomic data and the Chinese want to build the CDC to eventually steal the data from all the other centres,”adding a clear threat that “If the Chinese build the headquarters, the US will have nothing to do with Africa CDC”.
“Among the officials at the launch of the first phase of construction on Monday were Amira Elfadil, commissioner for social affairs at the African Union, and Liu Yuxi, Head of the Chinese mission to the AU. Elfadil said the African Union appreciated its partnership with China, which had offered to construct the building, and for China’s continuous support of the AU.” (South China Morning Post).
H.E Mr. Qian Keming (Vice Minister of Commerce of the People's Republic of China) addressed the ceremony virtually, stating that China’s construction of the Africa CDC headquarters represented “concrete action to follow through with commitments made at the 2018 Beijing Summit of the FOCAC.”(Africa News, China Daily)
H.E. Ambassador Liu Yuxi added that “China and Africa supported each other and (fought) shoulder to shoulder. China got valuable support from the African Union and African countries when it faced (its) hardest period”(Africa News)
“The headquarters building is expected to become one of the best-equipped centres for disease control in Africa, allowing Africa CDC to play its role as the technical institution coordinating disease prevention, surveillance and control in the continent in partnership with the national public health institutes and ministries of health of Member States.”(Africa CDC Press Release)
