On September 21st, Mr. Augustine Konneh, adviser to Liberian Foreign Ministry, president of the Institute of International Affairs, and professor of the University of Liberia visited CSUST. Mr. Jiang Changbo, vice president of CSUST met with the guest in Yuntang campus, accompanied by staff from International Exchange Division, International College and School of Foreign Languages.
Mr. Jiang expressed his warm welcome to Mr. Augustine Konneh’s first visit to CSUST and introduced briefly about CSUST. He pointed out that after decades of development, CSUST had cultivated a large number of construction personnel, and its scientific research had been widely recognized and had won many national awards. Quite a number of graduates have worked abroad and participated in construction projects in Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other places. He also recalled the cooperation between CSUST and the University of Liberia in building the Confucius Institute at the University of Liberia, and said that the Confucius Institute at the University of Liberia was a seedling of China-Africa friendship and cooperation, after nearly seven years of development, it had nearly trained over a thousand local talents who had a good mastery of the Chinese language and Chinese culture, and had become a bridge for Sino-Libya friendship. Mr. Jiang expressed his hope that CSUST would make efforts to enhance its cooperation and academic exchange with Liberian government and local universities to boost self-development capacity of Liberia, to improve local people's livelihood, promote the comprehensive economic and social development and to consolidate the friendship.
Mr. Augustine Konneh thanked CSUST for its hospitality and warm welcome. He said that Chinese teachers and volunteers from CSUST worked hard at the Confucius Institute at the University of Liberia, and made important contributions to promote the local Chinese language teaching. He also expressed his appreciation for CSUST’s support and assistance in fighting the Ebola virus. He pointed out that Liberian people were now passionate about learning Chinese and many government officials joined the trend. He hoped that in the near future, Chinese lessons could be introduced into the classrooms in more primary and secondary schools. He also expressed the wish to explore the possibility of exchange programs.
His visit to China was to attend the "2015 Beijing Forum on Human Rights "seminar held in Beijing, and was invited by CSUST to conduct academic exchanges and visits.
