Cameroon's Confucius Institute will have partnership with several newly established Chinese centers in promotion of cultural exchanges between the Central African country and China.
The Confucius Institute, an institution to popularize the Chinese language and culture abroad, welcomed the partnership on Monday with the teaching centers in Cameroon in response to the increasing interest.
At the Cameroon Institute of International Relations (IRIC) within the University of Yaounde II, where the first branch of the Confucius Institute was established in November 2007, the representatives of these five centers received certification, recognizing their official status as "branches of the Confucius Institute".
"It is the desire to open up to the world that justifies our partnership with the Confucius Institute. This is something that is fundamental. Within our institution, we have the training of teachers in Spanish, English, German but not Chinese," explained professor Andjiga, director of Yaounde's Superior Normal School.
"Once an opportunity is offered to us by the Confucius Institute, we would not wish to limit the learning. It's because of this that we have integrated all the teaching in our institution (physics, mathematics, geography teachers etc). We now have 1,565 students who have chosen to study Chinese," he told Xinhua.
"At the moment, the Confucius Institute has made five permanent Chinese language teachers available to us, we are going to have mass training of high school teachers for the Chinese language. We are going to immediately make available two rooms for this learning process," he added.
Dr. Serge Doka Yamigno, the deputy director of the Maroua Superior Normal School in the extreme north of Cameroon, said, "Last year, we received 15 students. But they had their classes at the Confucius Institute in Yaounde. The second group has 25 students. Thanks to the Confucius Institute's branch at our institution, our teaching students will be able to stay at Maroua from where they will take their classes.
"Maroua is situated in the Sahalian region of Cameroon and from this position, we want to irrigate the sub-region by spreading the Chinese language. This is the idea that led to the creation of this institute within our establishment," he said.
Three other branches are at the University of Buea, Saint-Andre School in Douala and the Senior Commerce School in Yaounde.
According to the vice president of the Confucius Institute in Cameroon, Zhang Xiaozhen, a professor sent by the Zhejiang Normal University in China, the institute has seen exceptional growth in the last two years.
"We are overwhelmed, the number of students does not stop increasing. Businessmen, Cameroonian public servants and other members of the private sector are all coming to us to learn Chinese," Zhang said.
"At the beginning of September semester, we had about 3,000 students in total who had been registered. And the number of teachers, both Chinese and Cameroonian, got to about 20," she added.
By Liu Fang (China View)
Editor: Feng Hui
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