Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said in Dar es Salaam on Thursday that China's investment in Africa is based on the mutual strategic understanding.

The prime minister, who is here to attend the ongoing 20th World Economic Forum on Africa, made the remarks after a discussion session with the theme" China-Africa: Defining a partnership for Growth".

"China's investment in Africa is based on the strategic understanding of the interest of both China and Africa. Those strategic interests won't change because of the crisis. That is why I think it is not a surprise that China's investment in Africa continued throughout the crisis," Meles told Xinhua.

Despite the global economic crisis, the Chinese financial commitment to Africa has steadily increased. Meles was responding to this question.

The prime minister said the investment in infrastructure and manufacturing sectors should be the key areas of focus of Sino- African cooperation in the future.

During the discussion session, participants from African countries spoke highly of China's investment in Africa, especially in the sector of infrastructure, saying China had played an important role in helping build and improve Africa's infrastructure.

The three-day forum, which opened here on Wednesday, is held under the theme of "Rethinking Africa's Growing Strategy".

The participants will examine the current, changing global landscape and identify the opportunities that can unlock Africa's growth potentials and the barriers to social and economic progress in the coming years.

It is the first time that the forum's African meeting is hosted in East Africa.

The World Economic Forum was established in 1971 by Swiss business professor Klaus Schwab. The platform used to be the European management Forum, which in 1987 changed its name to the World Economic Forum.

It is an independent international organization incorporated as a Swiss not-for-profit foundation. With the Motto entrepreneurship in the global public interest, it attaches importance to the sound relations between economic progress and social development.