China to build a thousand schools in Iraq
Two Chinese companies are awarded the contracts. Over the next two years, Power China will build 679 schools while Sino Tech will build 321. For UNICEF, decades of wars and violence have brought one of the best education systems in the region to its knees. In the first six months of 2021, Sino-Iraqi trade reached US$ 16.3 billion.
Baghdad (AsiaNews) – The Iraqi and Chinese governments recently signed a number of contracts that would see two Chinese companies - Power China and Sino Tech – build a thousand schools in the Arab country over the next two years. Chinese developers will be working with Iraqi companies.
The contracts are part of a framework agreement that highlights the growing relationship between the two countries, thanks also to the growing US disengagement from the area. Iraq has become a major destination for Chinese investment in the Middle East while China is the biggest buyer of Iraqi oil.
According to a housing ministry official, Hassan Mejaham, Iraq needs some 8,000 schools to meet current needs. Despite its oil wealth, wars, endemic corruption, and jihadi insurgencies have left Iraq with a broken infrastructure.
Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi oversaw the signing of the deal between China and Iraq. Power China is set to build 679 schools, while Sino Tech will build the remaining 321 with construction set to begin shortly and be over in two years.
Some schools should be ready by next year, reducing pressures on existing educational facilities, but the two countries are already involved in the next steps with plans for a second phase, with 3,000 schools, and a third phase, with 4,000.
Experts and international organisations have underscored for a while the shortcomings of Iraq’s educational system and broken-down schools. “Decades of conflict and underinvestment in Iraq have decimated what was once the region's best education system,” UNICEF wrote on its website, noting that “one out of every two schools is damaged and requires restoration.”
For the UN Fund for Children, “nearly 3.2 million school-aged Iraqi youngsters are out of school”, this in a country of 40 million people, the World Bank warned, where the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated already low levels of education.
Zhou Rong, a senior researcher at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times that the China-built school projects will boost non-government "people-to-people” relations and “cultural exchanges” at a time when US influence in the Middle East is waning.
However, the link between the two countries goes far beyond culture, with bilateral trade reaching US$ 16.4 billion in the first six months of this year, especially in the Kurdistan area, a “gold mine” for Chinese investors.
Iraq was China's third largest trading partner in West Asia and North Africa last year with US$ 30.1 billion in trade, while Beijing imported more than 60 million tonnes of Iraqi crude.
.png)
