At least 25 South Sudanese engineers on Monday traveled to China to attend seminar on road and bridge construction and maintenance.
Deng Marial, 28, a civil engineer in the ministry of transport who is among the participants, said he and his colleagues are looking forward to learn from the Chinese experience on road and bridge maintenance in order to return home and utilize the knowledge acquired from overseas.
I know we will go to China, we will learn a lot of things and we will come back to the country and try to help in a way we can,” Marial told The Juba Echo during the send-off ceremony held at the Chinese embassy in Juba.
“We hope to learn how they manage and maintain their roads and bridges, we will go through and then we will tell our leaders from here that this is what is happening there and if we can all cooperate we can may be try our best to cope up with what China is going through,” he added.
Aben Jackline Chol, quality control engineer in the ministry of roads and bridges, said she expects her country to benefit immensely from her group of participants who will study for 21 days in China.
“My expectation is to learn and see what is outside the world that we don’t have here and to see how to share the knowledge back home because we want to develop our country,” Chol said.
Madut Biar Yel, minister of transport, said appreciated the support the Chinese government has been providing to South Sudan over the years since independence in 2011.
He said they are grateful for the support provided on building Jur-River Bridge and also maintaining another bridge in Wau town of Western Bahr El Ghazal state.
“My advice to you is you are representing more than 10 million South Sudanese, go there and come back to advise us on what you have seen not only on roads and bridges,” Biar said while sending-off the participants.
“Don’t delete the images of the roads and bridges we have here in South Sudan don’t delete them in your mind, go and see how the Chinese developed their country. I believe they finished the necessary infrastructure that the people of China need that is why they are here to support,” he added.
Ma Qiang, Chinese ambassador to South Sudan, China is helping South Sudan and other brotherly African countries promote their social and economic development in a more independent and stable way through sharing the valuable experience and knowledge gained in China’s development in various fields.
“At the “Eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation” held in Dakar, Senegal in 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that in the next three years, China would work closely with African countries to jointly implement “nine projects” including capacity building. Over the past two years, positive progress has been made in the implementation of the “Nine Projects”, and China-South Sudan cooperation in various fields has achieved fruitful results,” Ma said.
He disclosed that inviting talents from various fields in Africa to participate in training seminar in China is an important practice in the capacity building project.
In July last year, the Seminar on Road and Bridge Construction and Maintenance in South Sudan was successfully held in Juba through online teaching.
Ma said the bilateral cooperation between China and South Sudan has achieved outstanding results in the field of infrastructure construction.
