On the afternoon of December 2, 2016, Premier Li Keqiang met at the Great Hall of the People with President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone, who was on a state visit to China.

Li Keqiang noted that since the establishment of China-Sierra Leone diplomatic relations 45 years ago, the two countries have witnessed smooth development in bilateral relations and achieved fruitful outcomes from mutually beneficial cooperation. Yesterday, President Xi Jinping and Mr. President held productive talks and decided to build a bilateral comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership. China is willing to work with Sierra Leone to constantly deepen political mutual trust, strengthen practical cooperation and intensify communication and coordination in international and regional affairs in a bid to better benefit the two peoples.

Li Keqiang pointed out that China is ready to, together with Sierra Leone, further tap cooperation potential in advantage complementarity, mainly facilitate cooperation in infrastructure construction and production capacity and carry out cooperation in mining, agriculture, fishery, deep processing of products and other fields in line with the principle of marketization. In 2014, the Ebola epidemic raged in the West Africa region. China offered assistance to regional countries including Sierra Leone within its capacity and defeated the epidemic with joint efforts. China stands ready to reinforce cooperation in counterpart hospital, medical personnel training and other public health areas with Sierra Leone and will continue to send medical teams to the country.

Ernest Bai Koroma thanked the Chinese government for taking the lead in helping the country to successfully fight against the Ebola epidemic and strengthen capacity construction in disease control and prevention, and expressed that Sierra Leone and China share sincere friendship through hard times. The Sierra Leonean side is willing to learn from China’s development experience, beef up cooperation in such areas as infrastructure construction, mining and agriculture and extend new fields of cooperation including communication, public health and tourism so as to push Sierra Leone-China relations and cooperation for comprehensive development.