The latest Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) took place in Dakar, Senegal in November 2021. Among the huge range of pledges and agreements, one of the most extensive was capacity building through scholarships, targeted training and people-to-people exchanges. In this Occasional Paper, Kenneth King analyses China’s pledges not just in the sphere of formal education, but across the many different sectors of China’s collaboration with Africa for the next three years. While the impact of COVID-19 can be seen in the reduction of some face-to-face opportunities in China, the extent of what is agreed to be implemented in Africa remains significant. Though these ambitious promises are agreed multilaterally with the whole of Africa, they are delivered bilaterally across the continent in more than fifty different country settings, reflecting how the Africa-China relationship remains strong after two decades of growing engagement.
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Education, Training and Capacity Building in the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) 2021: Multilateral and Bilateral Ambitions Twenty Years On
About the author:
Kenneth King is an occasional contributor to China Foresight, LSE IDEAS. He was Director of the Centre of African Studies and Professor of International and Comparative Education at Edinburgh University for many years and is now Emeritus Professor in its Schools of Education and of Social and Political Studies. His research focuses on international education, aid policy, and skills development. From 2006, he analysed China’s educational cooperation with Africa, and published China’s aid and soft power in Africa (James Currey, 2013). Since 2016 he has been researching India’s human development cooperation in Africa. His latest edited book, with Meera Venkatachalam, is: India’s development diplomacy and soft power in Africa (Boydell & Brewer, November 2021).