From May 18 to 19, the 2017 Joint Meeting of African Confucius Institutes was held in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. More than 240 people participated in the meeting of the largest scale by far. Also present were African and Chinese directors from 48 Confucius institutes and 6 Confucius classrooms in 35 African countries, as well as representatives from 20 China-Africa business and institutions. Zhan Xinli, Vice president of XMU, Carol Arinze Umobi, Vice president of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria and Director of Confucius Institute at NKU, and Robert Kotzé, Director of Confucius Institute at University of Stellenbosch, South Africa also turned up at the meeting.

The discussions and exchanges were primarily centered around 3 topics, namely local teacher training, technical training and Chinese enterprises cooperation. And the participants at the meeting reached a consensus that Confucius Institutes, as a cultural bridge of friendly communications and mutual understandings, would definitely grow more mature and popular in the days to come.

Along with her party, Vice president Zhan also took the occasion to pay a visit to NKU at invitation and sat on the annual council of the Confucius Institute. She said that next year XMU will scale up its publicity efforts by holding such activities like“NKU Day” to mobilize more teachers and volunteers to work in the Confucius institutes, and will provide more opportunities for the excellent students of the Confucius institute to study abroad in XMU.

In March, 2008, the agreement for the establishment of the Confucius Institute at NKU was signed by NKU and Confucius Institute Headquarters (Hanban). And the institute went into operation officially in Feb, 2009.

Edited by Meng Ling & Li Zhiruo

Source: http://news.xmu.edu.cn/59/d2/c1552a285138/page.htm