... and he's handing the baton to China as world leader and most favored nation. This is especially true in Africa where the US continues to lose ground.
What Chinese investment means for African higher education
There is no doubt that China means business in sub-Saharan Africa. Its investment in the region rose from next to nothing in 2004 to $3.1 billion (£2.1 billion) in 2013. In the same year, according to the World Bank, China became sub-Saharan Africa’s largest export and development partner, representing about a quarter of the region’s trade.
A recent paper from Miria Pigato and Wenxia Tang, respectively practice manager and consultant in macroeconomics and fiscal management global practice at the World Bank, notes that oil and other extractive industries remain the sectors of greatest interest to Chinese investors, and there is increased interest in financial services, construction and manufacturing.
But China has also started to take its higher education partnerships with the continent more seriously. At the second summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Johannesburg in December 2015, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced “10 major plans” to boost cooperation with Africa over the following three years. These include establishing a number of regional vocational education centres and several so-called “capacity-building colleges” to address Africa’s lack of skilled workers. These will train 200,000 technicians and provide African students with “40,000 training opportunities in China”.
Xi added that China will “offer African students 2,000 education opportunities with degrees or diplomas and 30,000 government scholarships”, and invite 200 African scholars to visit China each year.
Kenneth King, professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh and author of China’s Aid and Soft Power in Africa: The Case of Education and Training, published in 2013, says that the numbers are particularly impressive when you consider that the Chinese government has already upped its provision of scholarships for Africans to study in China from 18,000 in 2012 to 30,000 in 2015.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com...gher-education
The US is now on the outside looking in.
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