GABORONE, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- As part of strengthening friendship and deepening bilateral ties, Botswana and China signed letters of exchange on human resource development.

Botswana Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration Nonofo Molefhi and China International Development Cooperation Agency vice chairman Zhou Liujun appended their signatures to the letters in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana on Monday.

The letters will serve as the framework for strengthening cooperation in human resource development and promoting personnel exchanges between Botswana and China.

Molefhi said as a growing economy, Botswana desired to be self-sufficient in human capital development, and as such China could give impetus to such development.

He further said China has proven to be the ideal partner in doing so because the country is endowed with expertise in the human resource development area that will benefit other sub-sectors of the economy.

He said Botswana wanted to do things for herself in order to grow the economy, be it in the social cultural spheres, science or Information Communication Technology.

"As we aspire to be a high income economy by 2036, we should take advantage of the opportunities that have arisen from the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC)," he said.

For his part, Zhou said the purpose of his visit was to promote friendly cooperation and to follow up on the implementation of FOCAC outcomes.

He said China has so far trained some 1,100 people under the bilateral training cooperation and planned to train a further 170 Batswana in different areas this year although the figure has increased to 209.

Zhou said the human resource capacity building is part of the process to assist Botswana in her quest to promote industrialization.