A total of 32 officials from 18 African countries will attend a 15-day training course in China on poverty reduction, which opened in Beijing Thursday.

At the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held last November, President Hu Jintao pledged to strengthen China-Africa cooperation through eight measures including training 15,000 personnel in all fields in the upcoming three years.

The training course is part of that commitment.

At the seminar, officials from Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe will learn about China's policies and practice in poverty reduction, as well as its experiences in social and economic development.

The African officials will also go to Gansu Province in northwest China, where they will visit some poverty reduction programs.

Wang Guoliang, deputy director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, the leading organ in China's poverty reduction efforts, said China and African countries, as the developing nations, have something in common in relation to poverty reduction.

The two sides should have more exchanges and learn from each other so as to realize the millennium development goal proposed by the United Nations, he said.

He said he hopes the officials will learn more about China's economic and social development through this seminar, which would help them overcome poverty in their countries.

(Xinhua News Agency June 22, 2007)