ADDIS ABABA, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopian Minister of Education, Shiferaw Shigute, has hailed China's support to Ethiopia's education sector and to the endeavor to ensure education access to all school-age children in the East African nation.
The Minister made the remarks on Wednesday during a ceremony organized to hand over two standard elementary schools constructed by the Chinese government in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa.
China in 2009 announced that it would construct about 50 standard schools in Africa to support efforts on education improvement on the continent.
Speaking at the ceremony held in Bole Sub-city of Addis Ababa, Shiferaw stated that China has been constructing schools in Ethiopia under the China-Africa Friendship school construction program, which the minister said supports Ethiopia's endeavor to ensure education access to all school-age children.
"I would like to thank the Chinese government and the people of China for this generous support to the Ethiopian government and Ethiopian children. This China-Africa Friendship Program, 50 schools construction program has been implemented for the last two years,"said the minister.
"It is wonderful standard and best quality; we are very pleased. We would like to thank the contractors, the embassy, all organizers and participants by the name of the beneficiaries," he said.
The minster told reporters that Ethiopia and China have been cooperating in education sector, whereby China provides scholarship to Ethiopian students at different levels.
"We have great cooperation, between Ethiopia and China. The Chinese government provides us scholarship. Currently, we have over hundred post graduate students in China," noted the minister.
Speaking on the occasion, La Yifan, Chinese Ambassador to Ethiopia, expressed China's commitment to supporting the effort towards creating education opportunities for all school-age children in Ethiopia. "In education area, China and Ethiopia have implemented various of cooperation projects, from scholarship to training programs, from construction of schools to provision of teaching equipment," noted the ambassador.
He also recalled that China has constructed three schools in rural areas of Ethiopia, which help to solve the problem of insufficient educational resources in these areas.
"In the future, China will continue to strengthen educational cooperation with Ethiopia and make our cooperation more robust and better-structured.," added the ambassador.
(source: xinhuanet)