Mozambique ‘would like to learn’ best media practices from Chinese trainers

Chinese media professionals will help to train their counterparts from Mozambique, a senior official said on Tuesday.

While meeting a media delegation from the African country in Beijing, Jiang Jianguo, minister of the State Council Information Office, said the visiting group provided a great opportunity for the two countries to strengthen cooperation.

As economic cooperation has increased between China and Mozambique, the need for more news media communication about best practices has followed, Jiang said.

“We kept a positive attitude toward the news professionals and tried to broaden the cooperation with Mozambique in the media industry,” Jiang said. “Through exchanges, workers in the industry will gain firsthand experience.”

During the China-Africa Forum in December 2015 in Johannesburg, South Africa, President Xi Jinping said China would help to train 1,000 African news professionals each year through 2018 as part of a Sino-African cooperation plan.

The proportion of the 1,000 spots that will be allocated to Mozambique is expected to get bigger, Jiang said.

Emilia Jubileu Moiane, director of the Information Office of Mozambique, together with six Mozambican media officials, started a weeklong visit in China on Sunday to deepen communication with Chinese media officials.

“The Chinese media are in a rapidly developing era, and we would like to learn from them in various aspects, especially high technology,” Moiane said. “We would like to send more reporters and media professionals to China to get trained and learn new media technologies.”

A majority of Mozambican media reports are delivered through radio and print channels, while digital television broadcasts are still on the way. “There is a large gap in our media industry development compared with other countries,” Moiane said.

A Chinese TV soap opera, A Beautiful Daughter-In-Law Era, which was translated into Portuguese — Mozambique’s official language — by China Radio International in 2013, had a great influence on the country.

Moiane said Mozambique would like to import more Chinese TV series.

“To broadcast more about Chinese culture and life in China would increase our media diversity, which could also be achieved through information and news exchanges with Chinese media,” she said.

Xin Wen contributed to this story.