African delegation learns from China's cultural management

African trainees experience interactive multimedia facilities promoting traditional Chinese culture in Broad Link Cultural& Creative, a design company based in Shenzhen. [Photo by Wang Dejun/China Daily]

President Xi Jinping proposed the plan at the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in December last year.

During the Shenzhen program, delegates visited the country's leading cultural enterprises in the city, including internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, art printer and database provider Artron, and top animation company Huaqiang. They also attended lectures and events.

"We have seen that many abandoned factories have been turned into art zones," says Adama Diallo, an exhibition curator and art agent from Senegal, who was also on the team.

"Such experiences of Shenzhen offer us new ideas to make full use of our current venues to promote fine art, like building artists' villages," he adds.

More cooperation between China and Africa will follow, he says.

For these cultural promoters, the project is also a way to change any stereotypes about Chinese culture that may exist in African societies.

"In the 1960s, when I was a small kid, I often watched Chinese films, which were screened outdoor in my village," recalls Martial Goualebanzoume, an art designer for museums with the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Congo.

For most people in his homeland, for example, that was the first time when they had a "clear view of how China looks", says the designer, who was also visiting China.

But there are still many people in Africa whose impressions of China are caught in time, he says.

Goualebanzoume considers it an opportunity to let people know about the development of modern Chinese culture by sharing his experiences in Shenzhen.