Makerere University Confucius Institute Awarded for Contributing to “Belt and Road”

The first Hunan “Silk Road Youth Representatives” Story Sharing Seminar, and also an awarding ceremony, was held at the Rednet New Media Group studio on December 21, 2020. The Makerere University Confucius Institute, built in collaboration with Xiangtan University (XTU), was awarded as a model group.

Zhong Jianghua, a teacher from XTU College of Literature and Journalism and the first Chinese language teacher in the Makerere University Confucius Institute, told his story at the event. The young faculty of the institute shared their stories of contributing to Hunan-Uganda communication and the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative. The audiences were deeply touched, and spoke highly of their contributions to promoting Chinese culture and developing people-to-people amity.

During the past six years since its founding, the institute has boosted inclusion of Chinese language into Uganda’s national educational system. It helped Makerere University set up undergraduate program of Chinese language and Asian studies, and pushed forward the “3+1” joint talent cultivation program of the two universities. Its pioneering local Chinese language teacher training program has trained 100 local personnel, among whom 72 served as Chinese language teachers. This program was approved by the Center for Language Education and Cooperation of the Ministry of Education in 2019 to expand its trainee number to 500. The institute has also actively boosted China-Uganda academic exchanges, and organized international symposiums under the theme of “China-Africa relationship prospect under the background of ‘Belt and Road’”, and “China-Africa law culture comparison and exchanges in the new era”.