On Cultural And Academic Exchanges Between China And African Countries

Abstract

Cooperation between China and African countries has often been portrayed as an economic one. Despite multiple exchanges in the area of culture and knowledge production, not much is written about Chinese culture in Africa or knowledge production interaction between both China and African countries. Just to give an example, each African major town has Chinese restaurants and Africans like Chinese food. But food is seen as an economic asset, not a cultural one. Chinese cuisine is not enough taken as scientific knowledge, but as professional economic skills. I want to argue that economics is not divorced from culture and academia. I further want to understand how culture and academia have also united Chinese and Africans for many centuries. African universities consume more western knowledge than Chinese one, despite the fact that China offers alot in this regard as well. I want to show how African countries also offer alot to China in terms of knowledge production. I will choose few countries of Africa and examine how this cultural and academic exchange happens with China. My data are mainly from documentary research where I use content analysis. I seek to answer the following research questions: In what ways did the academic and cultural cooperation between China and African countries evolve? What can be done in order to make it more beneficial on both sides?

Keywords: China-African countries, academic cooperation, cultural exchange.