A delegation from one of Africa's largest countries came to Yizhou, a county-level city of Hechi, Guangxi, to hold talks with city officials on Oct 20. Nigeria Jigawa delegation visited Yizhou to explore mutual cooperation opportunities in the field of sugarcane and sugar products.

Yizhou officials represented by Mayor Liang Ning met the delegation members and held a forum at Dongzheng International Hotel on the same day to discuss potential cooperation modes in sugarcane industry.

Led by state governor Badaro, the Jigawa delegation introduced its sugarcane planting industry and inquired about Yizhou's sugarcane planting conditions, market rates and planting techniques. The two sides also exchanged opinion on the industrialization, mechanization and water conservancy modernization of sugarcane planting at the forum.

Liang Ning said at the forum that Yizhou has a flourishing agriculture sector. Cane sugar, silkworm, animal husbandry, fishery and forest-fruits have become pillars of its agricultural industry. Yizhou is also one of Guangxi's 32 high yield and high sugar content sugarcane counties. Its leading sugar enterprise – Guangxi Boqing Food Company, can process 15,000 tons of canes into sugar every day and its total industrial output value once reached 1.1 billion yuan ($173.3 million) in a year.

In the future, Yizhou will further modernize its sugarcane industry, ensuring operating scale, production mechanization and water conservancy modernization in order to increase productivity and reduce cost of planting.

Nigeria has Africa's most populous country, with 173 million people in total accounting for 16 percent of the entire African continent population. It also has abundant energy resources, and is Africa's biggest economic entity.

Jigawa's State Governor Badaro (L2) gives Yizhou's Mayor Liang Ning (R1) an information booklet about African state's sugarcane industry at Dongzheng International Hotel on Oct 20. [Photo by Yang Yecheng/Yizhou Party committee publicity department]

Edited by Mevlut Katik