China–Africa human resource development: Partnership or one-way?

Over the last two years, research has been carried out on several dimensions of China’s education and training cooperation with Africa – in Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, Egypt and Cameroon. Pambazuka readers may be interested to engage with some of themes that are emerging from this study.

First, despite China’s discourse about the parity and importance of symmetry in China–Africa cooperation, several of these education and HRD (human resource development) elements appear to be much more one-way than two-way cooperation.

There are, for example, in Kenya and Ethiopia very few Chinese students on scholarships from their host countries compared to the numbers of Kenyans and Ethiopians going on China Scholarship Council awards to China. The presence of education counsellors from China in Egypt and South Africa is certainly testimony to the fact that there have been significant numbers of Chinese studying in these two countries, and no less than 20 Chinese appear currently to be on host-country awards in Egypt.[1] However, the very large-scale, short-term training programme of 20,000 African professionals going to China is basically a one-way process. There are substantial numbers of Chinese going to Africa in medical teams, or as agricultural experts, or as trainers in agricultural and vocational colleges, but they are going as trainers not trainees.

Second, on the other hand, twinning and partnership are key characteristics of many other parts of China’s HRD support to Africa.

For instance, there are 22 Confucius Institutes (CIs) in Africa, and all of these are partnered with Chinese universities and institutes. Indeed, there are no less than 21 different higher education institutions (HEIs) in mainland China involved in supporting the Confucius Institutes in Africa. Each institute in Africa has both a Chinese dean or director as well as an African one. And the African CI provides the accommodation for the CI, and the visiting teaching staff and volunteers, as well as salary support, making it much more of a symmetrical partnership than the provision of training under our first point. Admittedly, the CI headquarters, Han Ban, in Beijing provides a very substantial annual subsidy to each of the African CIs, but it does so also to the 94 CIs in Europe and the 60 in USA and Canada.

This partnership thread is a central element in several other dimensions of China’s HRD cooperation, and particularly components in the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Sharm El-Shaikh Declaration of November 2009. Thus, there is a new scheme for twinning between 20 Chinese and 20 African higher education institutions. This may speak to the realisation that beyond individuals going for short- and long-term training, there is importance attached to institutional capacity building on both sides.

This key partnership theme is also very evident in three further items from the Sharm El-Shaikh FOCAC declaration. One is the China–Africa Science and Technology Partnership Plan. A second is the China–Africa joint research and exchange plan, between scholars and think tanks. And the third is a China–Africa partnership to address climate change. There has been a tradition of symmetrical science and technology partnerships, for example between China and South Africa since 1998. But it will be intriguing to see whether this existing model of parity can be extended under the ambitions of the FOCAC pledge. From the text of Sharm El-Shaikh at least, it sounds more like one-way cooperation since it is intended to ‘help African countries develop their own science and technology capacity’ (FOCAC 2009: 5.4.1). The joint research and exchange plan may again be a partnership where parity will depend on strong research institutions and think tanks in Africa partnering with counterparts in China. As this programme was only launched in March 2010, it is still much too early to see how the ‘politics of partnership’[2] will work out in this scheme.

Third, China’s aid to the formal education sector in Africa is comparatively very small.

The offer in the Beijing Summit of 2006 of 100 rural schools for Africa, repeated in 2009 as 50 China–Africa Friendship Schools, comes to a rather small number for the six-year period, of 2007–12 – just some 26 schools per year for the continent. These do not compare to the 2,600 primary and secondary schools constructed in 22 countries by Japan’s aid to Africa, between 1985 and 2008 – on average 130 per year (JICA, 2010). The other FOCAC offers include the professional training of some 15,000 Africans between 2007 and 2009. One element in this overall offer of 15,000 was the formal education component to: ‘Provide annual training for a number of educational officials as well as heads and leading teachers of universities, primary, secondary and vocational schools in Africa’ (FOCAC 2006: para 5.4.4). No number was actually given. But as there were four education resource bases set up in China to provide training for the formal education system in Africa, it might be estimated that a total of some 1,000 educational managers at different levels had been offered short-term training over these three years (Li et al, 2010). For the following triennium, 2010–12, an actual figure was promised at Sharm El-Shaikh – 1,500 teachers and head teachers would be trained in China. In general, such training would be conducted in 2–3 week courses in China.

Beyond these, an element of the 4,000 Africans offered full China Scholarship awards would have been related to the formal education systems of Africa – whether from ministries of education or from university faculties of education. The numbers would not be large as the bulk of these China Scholarships have been in the fields of science and technology.

Apart from these formal education-related components of China’s short- and long-term training programmes, there are several other formal education items that can be noted. These fall outside the official FOCAC pledges and commitments, and significantly they are all in the higher education area. These non-FOCAC items are bilateral offers of educational assistance to Africa. Three of the largest of these would be the building, equipping and staffing of the Ethio-China Polytechnic College in Addis Ababa, which opened its doors in 2008. This was the highest diploma level college in Ethiopia, and cost around US$15 million dollars. Another higher education contribution made was an offer of US$2.6 million dollars to support skills training and poverty reduction in South Africa. This was made at the time of President Hu Jintao’s visit to South Africa in early 2007, shortly after the pledges made at the great Beijing Summit of November 2006. Over three years later, however, most of this offer had not been translated into specific projects in skills development in South Africa. A third offer of Chinese support to higher education in Africa would be the US$21.8 million dollar, brand-new Fendell Campus of the University of Liberia, which was handed over to the government in July 2010 (Seboe, 2010).[3] Finally, there has been the recent agreement by China to provide a US$80 million dollar loan to Malawi to develop a science university (Kamanga, 2010).

The two completed higher education projects (in Ethiopia and Liberia) are substantial in size, but in comparative terms with other donors, these one-off bilateral agreements are not on the scale of the regular annual sector support to education and training by donors such as the UK’s DFID (Department for International Development). In several countries, such as Kenya and Ghana, DFID has been allocating some £10 million sterling annually over a five-year period.

Fourth, the Confucius Institutes in Africa are probably the single most visible instance of China’s cooperation in education in the continent.

At a time when several of the traditional Western donors have changed their policies from branding their educational aid in Africa, with British, Dutch or Danish ‘flags’ and have adopted different forms of sector budget support, it looks as if the ‘China–Africa friendship schools’, promised in the latest FOCAC meeting of 2009 would be explicitly identified as such. Similarly, the high-level vocational college in Addis Ababa is actually called the Ethio-China Polytechnic College.

By contrast with these, it is of course entirely appropriate that a language and cultural institute like the Confucius Institute be so named, in the same way as the Goethe and Cervantes Institutes, or Alliance Française and British Council are openly identified. What makes the Confucius Institutes different from these comparators, as we noted above, is that they are not located on the high streets of national or regional capitals but right inside a major national university or universities in some 15 African countries.

Fifth, China’s HRD and educational cooperation is people-based rather than infrastructure-based.

Although we have talked of the different education institutions constructed by China in Africa, arguably the focus of China’s HRD cooperation remains people-based. A large number of the FOCAC education pledges are based on people, whether students, volunteers or experts. This is illustrated by the commitment to train 20,000 people from Africa in the period 2010–12 and provide 5,500 long-term scholarships over the same period. Equally, the technical assistance theme is exemplified in the young volunteers-serving-Africa scheme that started in 2007, or in the many volunteers and teachers coming to work in the Confucius Institutes. Under other line ministries such as health and agriculture there has been a long tradition of Chinese medical teams going to Africa, as well as senior agricultural experts. With these two areas, infrastructure has also been an important component, with the 30 hospitals and 20 agricultural demonstration centres committed to Africa. Nevertheless, the human resources focus remains very strong, with no less than 50 agricultural technology teams going to Africa in the current triennium, and medical teams also continuing to be sent. Within the area of science and technology also, there are FOCAC pledges just being implemented to support 100 African post-docs to do research in China, as well to support 100 joint research and demonstration projects in Africa.

It should be underlined that there continues to run through the FOCAC process the strong emphasis on ‘cultural and people-to-people exchanges’, youth and sporting exchanges, in addition to the newer emphasis on implementing a China–Africa joint research and exchange plan, a climate partnership and a science and technology partnership. This focus on China being exposed to Africa and vice versa is central to the logic of China’s cooperation. So when the FOCAC 2009 Action Plan (para 6.4.1) mentions: ‘The two sides noted that people-to-people exchanges are conducive to mutual understanding and important to the deepening of China-Africa friendship. The two sides remain committed to promoting people-to-people exchanges.’ It is making a crucially important point about the nature of the cooperation process (FOCAC, 2009). The only other country that still pays as much attention to exchange of expertise and to capacity building through short-term training in international cooperation is Japan.[4]

This emphasis on the importance of Chinese expertise as a central component in HRD cooperation parallels a debate about the crucial role of Chinese workers in companies working in Africa, to which we turn shortly.

Sixth, China’s human resource cooperation with Africa is more at the post-basic level than at the level of basic education.

China’s does not engage with the Western debates about the six Jomtien education for all (EFA) goals, nor does it discuss the pros and cons of support to basic versus post-basic education, which is commonplace in Western donor discourse, and particularly in the EFA global monitoring reports. Nevertheless, it can be readily seen that the bulk of China’s HRD and educational cooperation is at the post-basic or higher education level. This is not to minimise China’s offer of 100 rural schools in the Beijing Summit pledge of 2006, or its supplementation through 50 China–Africa friendship schools in FOCAC 2009. It should be noted also that China’s offer to train teachers for primary, secondary and vocational schools is essentially short-term training in China. There is of course something artificial in seeking narrowly to determine whether an item of expenditure is support to basic or post-basic education and training; teacher training for primary education is a perfect example of something that is both basic and post-basic.

Nevertheless, the great bulk of both the one-way and the two-way people traffic between China and Africa is at the level of higher education, whether this involves education, health, agriculture or science and technology. China would argue that this reflects the priorities and preferences of its African partners and is inseparable from its planned long-term investment presence in Africa.

Seventh, the particular shape and character of China’s support to education, and to human resources more generally, help to explain why it does not often take part in donor coordination meetings at the country level in Africa.

It can scarcely be argued, when China is offering just one to three rural schools in many African countries over a six-year period – and the occasional much larger further or higher education project in just a few African countries – that it should take part in the regular education donor meetings at the country level. China is not involved in education sector support like DFID, so it is not an obvious candidate to participate in donor meetings, for example, about Ghana, Kenya or Uganda’s education sector support programme. Its human resources support does touch several line ministries, but it makes more sense for it to relate to a more general ministry such as Ethiopia’s Ministry of Capacity Building or Kenya’s Human Resources Development Department (HRDD).[5]

A more substantial point, however, may be that the various items that fall under China’s FOCAC statements on human resource development or education do not yet constitute a coherent aid package. There is no obvious connection between the offer of scholarships on the one hand, and very short-term training on the other. Indeed, they are organised through different ministries in China, and two different buildings of the Chinese embassy in many African countries, one linked to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and one to the Ministry of Commerce. Equally, the organisation of Confucius Institutes is done separately through its Han Ban headquarters in Beijing. Furthermore, the building of rural schools, hospitals, agricultural demonstration centres or vocational training centres is organised through the Ministry of Commerce, and its branch of the Chinese embassy in country. In all but two countries, Egypt and South Africa, therefore, there are no obvious Chinese education experts available at the country level to take part in any such donor coordination activity in the education sector.

Eighth, Chinese training through the presence of hundreds of Chinese companies in Africa is almost certainly much larger in scope than all the FOCAC HRD elements put together.

Here we enter an area of controversy as it is widely alleged that China does no training in Africa, but merely brings ‘hordes’ of its own workers. Deborah Brautigam has done her best to bring some robust evidence into this charged debate, and would admit that Chinese projects do use more of their own nationals as workers and skilled technicians than projects carried out by any other country. But the idea that China doesn't employ (or train) Africans is quite wrong (Brautigam, 2009: 154ff). We would say the same. For instance, in the telecommunications sector in Africa alone, it is claimed by Ethiopians that ZTE, which has the contract for the phone and mobile network across the entire country, is providing training for over 1,000 telecommunication engineers in the first phase alone (King, 2009: 46). And ZTE’s rival, Huawei, which runs six regional training centres in Africa, and two research & development centres, is said to have trained some 12,000 Africans to become the backbone of the African telecommunications industry after taking courses in these centres (Wang, 2010).

Of course, training and skills development policy depend crucially on the attitudes and policies of the different African governments and African companies which may be working with Chinese contractors or sub-contractors. In one large Ethiopian construction project, for example, the Ethiopian contractor had specified to their Chinese sub-contractor that they wanted five Ethiopians trained for every skilled Chinese worker employed.

IN CONCLUSION

These are just a few aspects of China’s current education and training cooperation with Africa. There are, however, many interesting questions to be raised about how China’s ‘South–South cooperation’ differs from that of traditional Western donors. Pambazuka readers may wish to engage with this debate by looking at the latest issue of NORRAG News which is entirely dedicated to an analysis of the ‘Brave new world of “emerging”, “Non-DAC” donors and their differences from “traditional” donors’ (NORRAG News 44, 2010).

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Kenneth King is visiting professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.
* This research has been supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC/UGC 750008). The views expressed here are the author’s.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] There are however no Chinese on South African scholarships as these are reserved for students from sub-Saharan Africa.
[2] See NORRAG NEWS 41 special issue on ‘The politics of partnership: peril or promise?’ – www.norrag.org
[3] Brautigam (2009, 158) also mentions China’s provision and operation of a vocational training centre in Uganda and its development of two more in Angola.
[4] See note on JICA staff and experts: ‘Staff: 1,664 staff. They are supplemented at any one time by thousands of and young and senior volunteers on both short-term and long-term contracts.’ http://www.jica.go.jp/english/news/field/2008/pdf/081003.pdf
[5] In fact the Chinese Embassy does deal directly with HRDD for Kenya’s short term training awards. In several countries, China does take place in donor meetings, e.g. in the roads sector where they are one of the leading funding or executing agencies.

REFERENCES

Brautigam, D. 2009 The dragon’s gift: the Real Story of China in Africa. Oxford University Press, Oxford

FOCAC, 2009.Forum for China-Africa Cooperation Sharm el Shaikh Action Plan (2010-2012); downloaded from http://www.focac.org/eng/dsjbzjhy/hywj/t626387.htm

JICA, 2010. JICA basic education cooperation in Africa. The joy of learning for all children. JICA, Tokyo

Kamanga, P. P. 2010 University brings hope. ChinAfrica, vol.2 Sept. 1.

King, K. 2009. China’s cooperation with Ethiopia: a new human resources-focused approach to development? OSSREA Bulletin, vol. vi. no.2. pp.45-51

Li W., Huang J., Wang K., Mao X., and Chen. F. 2010. Education assistance to Africa: We can do more and better, Transition Studies Review, vol. 17. No. 2 pp. 280-296

NORRAG NEWS 41 special issue on ‘The politics of partnership: peril or promise?’ – www.norrag.org

NORRAG NEWS 44 special issue on’Brave new world of ‘emerging’, ‘Non-DAC’ donors and their differences from ‘traditional’ donors’ –www.norrag.org

Seboe, P. 2010. Scratching Liberia’s back. China delivers independence gift – a modern university. FrontpageAfrica: http://www.frontpageafrica.com/newsmanager/anmviewer.asp?a=11190

Wang, W. 2010 What can China bring to Africa? China.org.cn July 4 2010. http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/2010-07/04/content_20416315.htm