Education in Africa works with Chinese language

It may sounds surprising, but since 10 years or so there is an ongoing trend visible in education. The new favorite foreign language in the african continent is not English, but it is Chinese. On the first hand it makes absolutely no sense, because the continents are around 10000 kilometers away, but it seems that on both sides (teachers and students) there is a high demand.

Why is the Chinese language so adorable for the African students? I don't know. Chinese is very complicated, uses a non-latin-alphabet and it takes many years to master it. In contrast to basic english (which has no more then 1000 words) it is very hard to learn the language. But it seems, that most students are highly motivated. That means, teaching Chinese in Africa is some kind of win-win-situation.

The funny thing is, that in African-Chinese business relationships the preferred language is not French, English or an African dialect, it is Mandarin. I would guess, that Chinese is more often used, then even English. And in future we will see an increase trend. That means, the typical african student will learn as a mother tongue his local dialect. As a second language French, as a foreign language Chinese and as an international language English. If Chinese become so dominant that it will replace French is unclear. But it seems, that French was the second language from the past, while Chinese is the language of the future.

What is the fastest and cheapest way to learn Mandarin? I would guess, that electronic books and recorded video lectures in Chinese will become an important role. They have compared to a human-teacher the advantage, that the workflow is cheaper, and that a huge number of students can be teached at the same time.

The interesting aspect in language learning is, that a language is strongly connected to education. It is not possible to learn the language alone, it is teached with a cultural background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAe5kX4xSxw

In the video we can see a classical teaching situation. A single teacher educates around 30 students at the same time. The problem is, that this workflow doesn't scale very good. If the aim is to teach many million of people some kind of technology is needed which works better. That is for example a chinese online-course on a smartphone app, which reduces the costs drastically. The introduction lecture which explains the origin of the Chinese language and which contains basic vocabulary for a hello world sentence needs only one times recorded by the best teacher available and can be played back hundred million of times without further costs. Such language learning technology is currently not used in Africa, and yes, this is a critics.

Student as a customer

Education has nothing to do with Chinese superiority and shouldn't be organized from topdown. The better approach is bring the african student in the position of a customer and see Chinese teaching as a business. The aim is to increase the market with discount prices for the masses, so that every African student can buy such a course.