As the the fourth Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) opens on 4th September 2024, it is a time to revisit China’s bilateral ties in domains like education and culture with the existence of the Confucius Institute of Cameroon.
About the Confucius Institute of Cameroon
The Confucius Institute of Cameroon was created in 2007 and lodged on the campus of the Cameroon Institute of International Relations (IRIC) until when the headquarters building of the Institute was built on the campus of the University of Yaounde II in Soa and inaugurated on Friday 17th November, 2017.
The Minister of Higher Education, Jacques Fame Ndongo and the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Cameroon in the presence of the then Rector of the University of Yaounde II, Prof Adolphe Minkoa She and the Rector of Zhejiang Normal University, Prof. Zheng Mengzhuang jointly inaugurated the building.
The project to build and equip the insitute was financed by the Chinese government through multidimensional Sino-Cameroonian cooperation.
The edifice consists of a ground floor and two other floors. It has an amphitheater with 265 seats, four classrooms with 32 seats each, a video conference room, a multimedia room, two conference rooms with 79 seats each, an exhibition hall with 79 seats and a cafeteria, amongst other sections.
The Confucius Institute of Cameroon is the largest institution for teaching the Chinese language and culture.
Though the schools headquarters is located at the University of Yaounde II, it has centres in Douala, at the Teachers Training College of Maroua, Institute of International Relations of Cameroon in Yaoudne, Advances School of Mass Communication and at the African Institute of Computer Sciences, where its teaching staff is deployed to teach Mandarin and Chinese know-how.
The institution is co-directed by a Chinese, appointed by the Confucius headquarters in China and a Cameroonian, Director of the Institute of International Relations of Cameroon (IRIC), appointed by the State of Cameroon.
The Confucius Institute of Cameroon has 44 teachers, with about three being Cameroonians.
To encourage Cameroonians, the school offers scholarship to 50 Cameroonian students to perfect their learning of the Chinese language and culture in China.
With over 15 years of existence in Cameroon and having trained over 50,000 Cameroonians, the Confucius Institute of Cameroon is a sure reflection of the excellent bilateral ties existing between Cameroon and China.
Eleanor Ayuketah Ngochi
