JOHANNESBURG, Dec. 4 -- Chinese President Xi Jinping announced here Friday that China will provide a total of 60 million U.S. dollars in free aid to the African Union (AU) to improve Africa's peacekeeping ability.

The grant will be used to support the building of the African Standby Force and the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis, Xi said at the opening ceremony of a summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).

Meanwhile, China will continue to participate in UN peacekeeping missions in Africa and support African countries' capacity building in such areas as defense, counter-terrorism, riot prevention, customs and immigration control, he added.

The peace and security cooperation plan is one of the 10 plans that Xi announced in an opening speech at the two-day summit of the FOCAC, which groups China, 50 African countries that have established diplomatic ties with China, and the AU Commission.

In the past decade, Chinese peacekeepers have been carrying out UN missions in unrest-hit African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Liberia, Sudan and South Sudan.