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Gibson Nyikadzino Correspondent
Did you know that China’s aspirational approach to education and investment in Africa is an opposite from the West’s when it comes to problem solving and solution orientation?
This explains why over the previous 40 years, China’s progress in modernisation has followed a constant pattern of investigating best-in-class models from other nations, experimenting in China, and then mass acceptance by government edict or market demand.
To appreciate the China-Africa co-operation, language use is also key in such exchanges. And in all fairness, to enhance mutual understanding, language will play a key part to enhancing mutual understanding and friendship between Africa and China. Therefore, talking about China’s initiatives to help Africa as plans for imperial designs is missing the point.
The whole point of Africa and Zimbabwe’s co-operation with China in the education sector and learning Mandarin is an issue of promoting a multiverse approach and moving away from the monoverse dominance of Anglicised language.
Learning other languages besides English is therefore subverting colonial systems of business and thought.
This explains the current status of higher education reform efforts in Africa and Zimbabwe through China’s help being aimed at supporting innovation by engaging and learning from the experiences of other people whom we cooperate with culturally. On many occasions, Africans who have been fed Western propaganda pointing to the inadequacies of African education systems in preference of colleges and universities in western Europe have also been at the fore to disparage other sources of education from other parts of the world.
However, these people become unmindful to the view that two of China’s universities, Tsinghua and Peking, are ranked best on the 2023 top 20 global university rankings list.
In a world that is encouraging a multiverse approach to do and implement ideas, to think of getting western knowledge prescriptions alone brings detriments to the ability of Zimbabwe and Africa to kick-start the processes of economic transformation.
To help Africa catch-up with the world, education and cultural exchange initiatives by China have been crucial in that regard.
These initiatives include the 20+20 Cooperation Plan in which 20 Chinese higher education institutions established partnerships with 20 higher education institutions from 17 African countries.
The other elements have also been the establishment of the Confucius Institutes in Africa for Chinese language learning and culture exchanges, building educational facilities such as vocational schools based on the needs of individual African countries and providing scholarships and financial support to higher education in Africa.
The progress that has been made in poverty eradication and sustainable development in China is all based on the will to open the education sector of the Asian giant unlike where the West has shut its scholarships on a government to government basis on countries like Zimbabwe, knowing that a country that has no modern educational facilities heads towards de-industrialisation or unfit industrial progress.
With instructive education and knowledge systems, there emerge serious and non-difficult thoughts in framing models of success.
In a world where scientific, technical and cultural forms of cooperation are bedrocks of building relations and finding common solutions to common problems, the rise of China should be an advantage for Zimbabwe to access a transformative and solution-based education framework.
The role of China as a key and alternative global player points to the presentation of choices in problem-solving.
The danger of adopting education from the Western world alone is that people of the global South will risk looking at things in a unidirectional and one-dimensional way, instead of a multiverse, for Western education does not primarily address the needs of African countries.
It is superficial and divorced from the social environment that Africans do operate in.
As part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has been focusing more on helping African countries develop the STEM education system that defines the upgradation of learning methods by prioritising the science, technology, engineering and mathematics components in developing the continent.
This educational upgradation is what dictates pragmatism that ensures the adoption of elements that provide a logical pathway to securing well-paying reliable employment for the young generation of academics and school leavers.
One initiative by the Chinese is through what is known as the Zimbabwe Job Fair that is aimed at providing a platform for employers to recruit and allow job-seeking graduates to get opportunities for work at Chinese enterprises.
Also, the China Zimbabwe Friendship Scholarship initiative gave birth to the signing of agreements with institutions of higher learning in Zimbabwe, to which since 2020, the scholarships have benefited 680 students and bridging government to government co-operation.
Contrary to the western lexicon that views China’s initiatives in Africa as aid, this is co-operation built on a win-win platform to which China’s opening of its education system to the world is in helping other states to have sustainable mechanisms for development.
It is important for Zimbabweans to embrace these opportunities and get the critical knowledge skills and sets that will help reboot the economy from a technical and scientific point of view.
Whatever is adopted from the East or West, should be used to address our promotions and give prescriptions that resolves our challenges.
Only through education and cooperation can we move to design thinking, where Zimbabweans can best develop critical thinking skills key to meet the 2030 targets.
Gibson Nyikadzino is a Media and International Politics Researcher. He holds a MSc in Politics and International Relations.
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter