BEIJING, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao left here Tuesday to begin state visits to eight African countries from Jan. 30 to Feb. 10.

    At the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held in early November last year, Chinese and African leaders pledged efforts to forge a new type of strategic partnership between China and Africa.

    Following are the main points of what Chinese and African leaders pledged to do to promote the China-Africa strategic partnership in a declaration issued at the end of the summit:

    -- Increase high-level visits, conduct strategic dialogue, enhance mutual political trust and promote enduring friendship;

    -- Deepen and broaden mutually beneficial cooperation, encourage and promote two-way trade and investment, explore new modes of cooperation and give top priority to cooperation in agriculture, infrastructure, industry, fishery, IT, public health and personnel training to draw on each other's strengths for the benefit of the peoples;

    -- Increase exchange of views on governance and development to learn from each other, make common progress and enhance each other's respective capacity for self-development;

    -- Increase dialogue between different cultures, promote people-to-people exchanges and interaction, particularly those between the young people, and boost exchanges and cooperation in such areas as culture, science and technology, education, sports, the environment, tourism and women affairs;

    -- Enhance international cooperation to jointly address global security threats and non-traditional security challenges, and uphold the common interests of the developing world in the spirit of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and coordination;

    -- Enhance the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, strengthen collective dialogue and increase coordination and cooperation of the Action Plan with NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa's Development) and the social and economic development plans of African countries;

    -- Properly handle issues and challenges that may arise in the course of cooperation through friendly consultation in keeping with China-Africa friendship and the long-term interests of the two sides.