by Piyush Mathur
The Economic, Social and Cultural Council of the African Union (ECOSOCC) and the China NGO Network for International Exchanges (CNIE) will hold an event on the 19th and the 20th of November, 2026, to mark 70 years of diplomatic relations between Africa and the People’s Republic of China. Titled ‘From Dialogue to Action: Citizen-Led Partnerships for a Shared Future’, the event’s venues will be Ébène & Moka, Mauritius.
The event requires prior online registration for attendance—and the deadline for registration is November 12. This is the link to the online form:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeL-h4p8sn9R0rTQQpUJ3mXS_HfXhsG0HDFJKDajKZth7c92Q/viewform
The event promises to build on the May 2025 Lusaka Declaration of the Inaugural Edition.
Other details, and issues with the event’s framing and messaging
The ECOSOCC’s announcement for the event was officialised inexplicably as late as November 9—though it was apparently informally uploaded somehow in advance anyway on an AU website on November 6 (which is still quite late).
This announcement indicates that the registration is aimed at organisations, institutions, and businesses (to the exclusion of individuals) with seats limited to around 150: https://ecosocc.au.int/en/registration/2nd-edition-africa-china-people-people. The announcement also implies that those who register must wait for a confirmation receipt from the organisers.
While a parenthetical mention in the Delegate Pre-Registration Form suggests that international attendees have to pay for their own travel and accommodation, it is hardly clear whether Mauritians themselves may attend the event without having to pay any money or even whether they can skip preregistration.
There is no clearly stated attendance or registration fee anywhere anyway, but nor is it clear from the above announcement and registration form whether the registration itself is actually free (for anybody, be it locals or internationals).
Another frustrating aspect of these event-related announcements is that they present themselves to dangling privileges for those who register (presumably as organisational representatives); this framing belies the spirit of the event as a genuine people-to-people dialogue, which is how the event is otherwise advertised.
It would have been more accurate to advertise this event as an organisation-to-organisation privileged dialogue.