Bringing China to TZ, one student at a time

Wherever she meets people from China,11-year-old Neema Mutimagwe,Standard Six pupil, is moved by her feelings to switch language from Swahili to Chinese.

On one of the past weekends when Neema went for shopping at Mlimani city, a popular shopping mall in Dar es Salaam, she came across Chinese people .

She couldn’t hold herself back from starting conversation with them in Chinese language.

“I started by greeting them, they responded and the conversation continued. They were pleased to see me speaking their language,” she says.

Neema was neither born or raised in China, but she is learning the language at her school--- Mlimani Primary School.

For her, learning Chinese language in classroom is one thing, but practicing is another thing that makes her quickly grasps the language.

She togather with her 9 classmates who begun learning the language last year have reached level two which involves constructing sentences.

“I can construct sentence, I like learning Chinese and my parents encourage me to put more efforts in learning it for my future particularly in the job market and business,” says Happiness Komba, Standard Seven pupil at the school.

The school welcomed the programme two years ago, and currently a total of 24 pupils have opted to learn the language, 14 of them are still at level one.

The programme is run by Confucius Institute at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM). The institute is non-profit public institution affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China whose aim is to promote Chinese language and culture, support local Chinese teaching internationally, and facilitate cultural exchange.

The institute has deployed two Chinese teachers at the school, one teaching pupils of level one.

Ms Cen Renxiu, Chinese teacher at the school, describes her pupils as curious to become fluent in the language.

“Chinese characters are little bit difficult to understand, but I teach them step by step,” she says.

Prof Zhang Xiaozhen, director of the Confucius Institute, says for primary schools it’s only Mlimani which the language is taught because the government has not yet introduced Chinese language as a subject in primary education.

“We are teaching pupils at Mlimani primary school just to help them know how to communicate in Chinese language within the university campus where the Institute is based and in most cases pupils mingle with us (Chinese people) and seem interested to learn the language,” she says.

Currently, Chinese language is taught as optional subject in secondary education and tertiary level. So far, six secondary schools in the regions of Dodoma, Morogoro and Dar es Salaam are teaching the language.

Some universities, including UDSM, offers diploma course of Chinese language, and Prof Xiaozhen notes that efforts are underway to introduce Bachelor of Arts in Education (BAE) majoring English and Chinese language from next year.

Prof Xiaozhen argues that learning Chinese language is important because China is becoming the economic powerhouse of the world.

At the moment, socio-political and economic links between Tanzania and China are strengthening, not only by the increasing volume of trade between the two nations, but also the number of Chinese citizens in Tanzania carrying out various construction work and other projects.

It is estimated that there are more than 20,000 Chinese people and more than 100 Chinese companies in Tanzania. These can provide more than 80,000 job opportunities for Tanzanian people.

“This situation shows necessity for learning Chinese language so as to facilitate communication and interactions between Tanzanian and Chinese people,” she says.

In ensuring that the language expands in the country, the Confucius Institute at the University of Dar es Salaam is aimed at preparing local Chinese language teachers.

But, the Chinese language comes at a time when debate is still raging on whether it was necessary to add more foreign languages in the education system while students are already struggling with already existing English language.

An independent education activist, Mr Mtemi Zombwe, sees it as unimportant to introduce Chinese language in school while country’s education system faces chronic challenges that needed to be urgently addressed.

He argues that more efforts could be put on making education system capable of producing graduates who are able to create job opportunities for themselves and others.

“I don’t agree with decision to introduce more foreign language, though it’s not bad but I think there are major issues in education that are supposed to be addressed,” he says.

“Majority of Chinese don’t speak English, but they are successful, the important thing is to impart to students the competence, knowledge and skills,” he argues.

But, Mr Godfrey Bonaventura, Research and Policy Analysis manager at HakiElimu, thinks it it not a bad idea to teach Chinese language as a subject considering that China is now among economically leading countries in the world.

“Learning Chinese language in school will help Tanzanians communicate in this language when they engage in businesses with Chinese people or work with them considering that many Tanzanians nowadays travel to China for business purposes,” he says.

The trade between Africa and China increased in value from $11 billion in 2000 to $166 billion last year. Chinese small scale traders are found in many African countries.

In Tanzania, where imports from China have been about 15 per cent of its total, Tanzanians complain about the growing number of cheap and counterfeit products.

China’s purchase of raw materials has become an important export for many countries. China-African trade now accounts for 14 per cent of Africa’s trade and 4 per cent of China’s.

It is almost entirely raw materials to feed China’s booming manufacturing- industry, in particular iron ore, copper and platinum, base metals, oil, precious stones and wood products.