JUBA, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Meng Shaohua, 32, belongs to a growing army of Chinese expatriates who now call Africa home after leaving their homeland to lend a helping hand to Africans by developing critical infrastructural projects.
Meng, a native of Henan Province in central China, completed his English language studies at North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, and boasts experience and knowledge of three African countries since starting work in September 2011.
He has worked in a variety of fields including translation, quality assurance and administration, and is currently a contract manager with PowerChina in South Sudan.
"I studied English because I wanted to go and see what is outside China. English is the major communication tool between different people," he told reporters in Juba early this week.
Meng started his first job in Sudan in 2011, where he worked in the quality assurance department with Australian firm SMEC Holdings during construction of the Roseires dam project on the Blue Nile at Ad Damazin.
He said his stay and interaction with Africans has richly informed him, hence dispelling stereotype narratives of a continent that is a scar on the world's conscience as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair once remarked.
Meng said Africa is a very young continent that needs quality education and infrastructure development to help leapfrog from backwardness to modernization.
PowerChina is currently handling the ongoing Juba power distribution system rehabilitation and expansion project, which was funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB).
It comprises five different lots like rehabilitation of diesel plant substation, rehabilitation and expansion of medium voltage network, low voltage network, and rehabilitation and expansion of street lighting and improvement of customer care.
He said that Chinese people are willing to offer support to Africa, since China shares similar development path with most African countries.
Before coming to South Sudan, he worked as translator on the 600 MW Karuma dam in Uganda in 2014, a country he speaks positively of as a beautiful country gifted by nature.
Meng noted that lack of experience on big infrastructural projects is a big problem on the continent which is slowly being addressed.
"In China, we have an old saying that if you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good favor," Meng said.
He disclosed that one of the positive achievement in his short stint in Juba is the recent handover of management to South Sudanese of the concrete poles factory capable of producing 13,350 poles for the electricity distribution in the capital and other states, since inception in April 2017.
Ma Liansheng, 54, deputy project manager with PowerChina in South Sudan, told reporters that he has learnt different languages because of movement and interaction with different people and cultures on the African continent.
The native of north China's Hebei Province said that he has grasped some Arabic and English language stemming from work experience in northern Sudan where he worked at the Merowe Dam, one of the largest hydropower projects in Africa.
The dam was constructed by China International Water and Electric Corp and Sinohydro Corp.
Ma also briefly worked on the Karuma dam project in Uganda before he was posted to South Sudan.
Ma cited insecurity as one of the biggest challenges he and his colleagues faced in South Sudan prior to signing of the revitalized peace agreement in September 2018 in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa that ended a five-year-long conflict.
Both Meng and Ma hope to stay for additional three years in South Sudan, where they started work in 2018.
