Vocational education, as an important strategic resource serving China's overall diplomacy, has always played a vital role in bolstering the sustainable development capabilities of countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It helps the BRI countries and regions enhance their capacity building in their independent development and accelerate their modernization.
Against the backdrop of the vibrant development of the Global South that represented by China and Africa, China's vocational education has actively aligned with major national development strategies such as the “Made in China 2025”, “the BRI” and “the innovation-driven development strategy”, and incorporated positive experience and measures drawn from the new normal in economic development into the building of special development paths for vocational education, which features intensive development, integration between industry and education, cooperation between universities and enterprises, and establishment of quality control and assessment systems. China's experience and measures have provided African countries with valuable lessons in the development of their vocational education and cultivation of high-caliber technical personnel.
In 2022, the China-Africa Technical and Vocational Education Cooperation Alliance reached a cooperation intention with Tanzania's National Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (NACTVET) for implementation of a program designed to formulate national standards of vocational education in Tanzania. The program has organized 53 prestigious Chinese vocational education institutions and dozens of experts from both countries to participate in drafting national vocational education standards for Tanzania on the basis of China's relevant standards and systems in a drive to facilitate the development of Tanzanian vocational and technical education and to nurture more high-level talents for the country's economic and social development.
It is the first time that China has ever directly partaken in the development and revision of vocational education standards for an African country on such a large scale.
Based on the experience gained from this development and revision, a subsidiary company for international education of China International Intellectech Group Co., Ltd. (CIIC) in collaboration with the China-Africa Technical and Vocational Education Cooperation Alliance and hundreds of Chinese vocational education institutions, have successively initiated the second and third sets of Tanzanian vocational education standards, which involve more than 300 secondary disciplines.
Some provincial-level education authorities and vocational education institutions in China, including these from Shaanxi province, have handed over to Tanzania's National Council for Technical Education their self-developed vocational education standards for separate occasions in April and October 2023.
This February, Tanzania officially rolled out the China-assisted vocational and professional education standards nationwide.
At a national conference on the promotion of vocational standards and professional teaching standards in Tanzanian Morogoro city in February, NACTVET Executive Director Adolf Rutayuga said that the standards with reference to Chinese standards will help improve the quality of Tanzanian vocational education, enhance technical competence of Tanzanian students. This will help address the country's mismatch between supply and demand in the labor market, better serving the country's macroeconomic development strategies, he noted.
Speaking at the Dialogue on International TVET Cooperation and Development (China and Africa) in Jinan City of East China's Shandong Province in April 2023, Tanzanian Deputy Minister of Education, Science and Technology Omari Juma Kipanga said that China and Tanzania have a long-standing cooperation in vocational education and that the two countries have jointly held a number of cooperation conferences over the past decade.
Noting that Tanzania has carried out a series of vocational education cooperation programs with China through the China-Africa Technical and Vocational Education Cooperation Alliance, Kipanga said that Tanzania looks forward to further advancing its cooperation with China to a higher level and hopes more African countries to engage in China-Africa vocational education cooperation.
In a letter of thanks sent to presidents of Chinese vocational education institutions involved in the formulation and revision of Tanzanian vocational standards, NACTVET said that the special Chinese assistance has helped Tanzanian vocational schools further improve their relevant standards, advanced technological development of related industries, and make outstanding contributions to Tanzania's sci-tech development.
It has become a distinctive feature of Chinese vocational education in its overseas development to help domestic enterprises go abroad, and provide human resources supporting the Belt and Road cooperation and international capacity cooperation.
In 2024, the CIIC International Education will continue to work together with the China-Africa Technical and Vocational Education Cooperation Alliance to deepen the collaboration between government departments, enterprises and universities and forge new cooperation mechanisms of vocational education.
(Executive editor: Zhu Zeya)
