In order to solidly promote the "Belt and Road" rules and standards "Soft Unicom" and deepen China-Africa economic and trade cooperation, on May 26, the China Item Coding Center, with the South African Item Coding Organization (GS1 South Africa) and the Kenya Item Coding Organization (GS1 Kenya) held a symposium in Beijing and officially signed a memorandum of cooperation to reach strategic cooperation around the joint construction of the "China-Africa Trade Digital Mutual Trust Verification Platform", use digital power to promote the high-quality development of China-Africa trade, and inject new impetus into the construction of the "Belt and Road" rules and standards "Soft Unicom". At the symposium, the China Item Coding Center shared the innovative application results of product barcodes and product data in my country, and focused on introducing the co-construction model of the "China-Africa Trade Digital Mutual Trust Verification Platform".
The platform will rely on the global unified identification system of the International Organisation for the International Item Coding (GS1) to build a two-way verification mechanism for key Chinese and non-consumer products such as medical devices, food, alcohol, electronic products, etc., to create a reliable product identity verification system for China-Africa trade, and break trade barriers through digital means. GS1 South Africa and GS1 Kenya highly praised the cooperation, believing that platform construction will greatly improve the level of trade facilitation in China-Africa and are in line with the concept of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation under the framework of the "Belt and Road".
The two sides respectively introduced the development of their own GS1 standards, and based on the actual needs of the African market, they put forward constructive opinions on the platform's in-depth cooperation in agricultural product traceability, medical device supervision, cross-border e-commerce and other fields. In addition, the 2025 G20 Summit will be held in South Africa. GS1 South Africa said that it will take this opportunity to actively display the results of the promotion platform, so that the results of China-Africa digital cooperation will exert greater influence on a global scale.
Under the joint witness of the delegates, the three parties completed the signing of the memorandum of cooperation. In the future, all parties will carry out close cooperation around platform construction, data interaction verification, publicity and promotion, fully implement the spirit of the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, actively implement the initiative of jointly building the "Belt and Road", and fully promote the construction of the "China-Africa Trade Digital Mutual Trust Verification Platform", realize the mutual recognition of China-Africa product identity and the trustworthy circulation of data, further broaden the space for China-Africa trade cooperation, and assist the "Belt and Road" economic and trade exchanges and cooperation.
