Chinese professors welcome new institute

Three Chinese professors welcomed the opening of Kenya's fourth Confucius Institute.

Li Yuan, director of the Egerton University Confucius Institute (Nakuru), and Wu Shengzheng, director of the Confucius Institute at Kenyatta University (Nairobi), both attended the launch of a new Confucius Institute at Moi University in Uasin Gishu County in the Great Rift Valley on March 30.

Liu Gaoqing, a professor of agriculture at Egerton University's Confucius Institute, did not attend the function but applauded the move to establish a fourth Confucius Institute in Kenya.

Liu says Zhao Xiaolin, the new director of the Confucius Institute at Moi University, is enthusiastic about her new appointment.

"Zhao announced her arrival to Kenya on WeChat and I am confident she is up to the task to manage the new institution," he says.

Liu says the new institute will help diversify the fields of study offered at Confucius Institutes across the country. The Egerton University Confucius Institute focuses on agriculture, Chinese culture and language while the Moi University institute will mainly focus on the textile industry.

The Kenyatta University Confucius Institute focuses on the arts, communications, Chinese painting, calligraphy and language.

Li says Confucius Institutes must combine language teaching and cultural exchanges with technology training to benefit the local economic development of the country.

Wu says launching a new institute in the western part of the country decentralizes the concentration of the institutes in the capital, Nairobi.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 04/03/2015 page26)