Comparative Education Bulletin - Faculty of Education - The ...

As noted above, China’s capacity building role in Africa can be
seen in two ways: on one hand, China offers direct aid to Africa's
educational development; and on the other, China’s vision of
educational development could be adopted by African countries for
their own educational systems. In November 2005, education ministers
from China and seventeen African countries signed “The Beijing
Declaration”, offering a joint vision and commitment to educational
development. It can debated whether the Beijing Declaration represents
a Chinese vision or a model and to what extent it differs from other
international declarations such as those expressed in the Millenium
Development Goals (MDGs) or in the Education For All (EFA) initiative.
The Beijing Declaration does not suggest that Africa should
learn from China. It considers free and compulsory basic education
as a human right. Also, it makes a commitment for participating
countries to focus on lifelong education and on vocational training;
on the improvement of quality through reform and through the use of
information and communication technology in education; and on the
development of high-quality higher education (Forum on China-Africa
Cooperation, 2005). During the Education Minister’s 2005 forum,
China also pledged to increase substantially the education aid package
provided to Africa. In this case, and in other instances such as during
IPRCC’s July 2006 Workshop on Poverty Policy and Practice, the two
roles of China – as a model and as a donor – seem to merge.
During the third Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2006,
the Chinese Government pledged to increase the training of African
specialists in “various fields” from 10,000 in the 2004-06 period to
15,000 in the following three years. The Third Forum also decided to
organize regular China-Africa Forums of Ministers of Education. The
aid package also included assistance to African countries to set up
one hundred schools; a pledge to increase the number of scholarships
from 2,000 to 4,000 per year by 2009, as well as an offer of training
to educational officials and heads of leading educational institutions
(Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, 2006). This package is in itself
quite modest as compared to other bilateral donors’ aid to Africa, and
does not especially point to the existence of a Beijing Consensus or a
Beijing model for capacity building or for educational development.
Conclusion
It is difficult to consider China as a bilateral donor without considering
it as the diffuser of a development model along the lines of a
“Beijing Consensus” because of its tremendous success in economic
development. In many cases the two roles seems to be confounded –
China is providing capacity building and organizing workshops and
forums to exchange lessons with Africa. Such exchange of experience
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