I personally believe the single greatest opportunity (and probably the cheapest) for Kenya to leap ahead of many nations and potentially become a first world country is to incorporate Mandarin into the curriculum EARLY (NOW). If it means importing teachers and sending locals to China to learn, so be it. In 20 years, every Kenyan below 30 should be fluent in both Mandarin and English. The government can fund like 1000 young teachers (for maximum ROI) to begin with and employ one in each high school.
That direct and straightforward economic and strategic decision will contribute immensely to making Kenya a first world nation. Kenya has remained ahead of other East African nations because the entire curriculum is based on the English language at a time when English speaking nations were economic superpowers. The tide is changing and I think Kenya should reposition itself.
I believe Magoha and others should start taking Mandarin very seriously. The main reason Tanzania and other East African nations are less developed than Kenya is because their leaders adopted Kiswahili instead of English with that ujamaa and socialism nonsense. Moi might have been a dictator, but the education policies he implemented and emphasized are part of the reason why Kenya’s service sector is booming.
Benefits:
More Chinese tourists will visit Kenya if many Kenyans can speak Mandarin
More business dealings with the largest economy this century
Easy transition to a service-based economy. By then, Kenyans will make good money teaching Mandarin in other East African nations. The same way they are benefiting by teaching English.
This is a crude assessment and I believe you might have a contrary opinion. Feel free to disagree.
The World will not escape the influence of China, for a long time to come.
Early adopters of the Mandarin language will benefit in so many ways.
Tupende tusipende, huo ndio ukweli.
you realise we have the biggest youth population,
do you also realise no country ever prospered from without but from within…
china is a barren country ,importing alot of it’s resources…so imagine we give them resources alafu we ask for jobs…i’ll repeat , tunawapea resources then tunawaomba kazi…isnt this foolhardy…ungesema we take over and industrialise africa sisi kwa sisi…
let me put it this way mr Hai , dont be a leader , hautatusaidia if this is your magic bullet…
Learning Mandarin serves only one main purpose. It allows Kenyans to interact better with their most important future customers - the Chinese. It is simple common sense. If China will be the economic super power in our lifetime, then its obvious that the Chinese will be the best paying customers and it is important to learn their language. The largest sum of money to be made in our lifetime is in China based on hundreds of economic forecasts. China will remain the economic superpower for the next 100 years. If you can’t sell anything to a Chinese consumer, then you will be screwed.
Learning Mandarin today is akin to learning English in the 1900s. Imagine the possibilities.
Learning Mandarin today is akin to learning English in the 1900s.
Those that learned the white man’s language are glad that they did - or rather their descendants are. Today, you know them locally as “dynasties”.
The goal is to profit from the Chinese. Chinese have been learning English for a long time. For Kenya to develop easily, China has to be its largest market ie its biggest customer.
Americans don’t speak mandarin but the Chinese do speak basic conversational English. Americans =customers, Chinese =sellers.
It follows then that once Chinese become the biggest consumer market in the world, mandarin speakers will have a leg up in the huge 500 million middle class market.
If the knowledge of the export market language were a factor of success, India would be in China’s position and China in India’s position. And Japan would never have happened. Note also that Tanzania is the only East African country that uses Kiswahili extensively and is not behind Kenya as you have been indoctrinated to believe. Lastly, English is more widely and fluently spoken in Uganda than Kenya. So, language does not account for the differences in economic performance.
It is a factor of success, but not the ONLY factor. Secondly, knowledge of the export market language works best for small countries and for first movers. India was not a first mover and it is too big to benefit from language alone.
Kenya is a small country, relatively. Language alone can propel us into a middle income economy and other factors will take over. Kenya is a speedboat, India is like a cargo ship. You don’t expect the two to use the same amount of fuel or to develop at the same speed if they make the same decision.
You can liberate 50M people from poverty using simpler policies than you would need to liberate 1.4 billion people.
The path to development for a small nation like Kenya, may differ from that of a larger country like China or India.
This is assuming Kenya has anything important to export to China. Tea, our largest export is from china. Labda avocados or flowers of which a large chunk go to Europe. Alafu China is Australia’s largest market but they don’t speak Chinese, they actually export valuable raw materials such as iron ore and other minerals, plus products such as milk and beef much more cheaply than we can,