The Green Technology Confucius Institute (GTCI) Visits Beijing and Wuhan to Advance its Position as a Critical Component of the South African Energy Nexus

UNIVEN Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Bernard Nthambeleni recently led a delegation on a business trip to Beijing and Wuhan, China. Members of delegation include Prof Eric Maluta and Prof Grace GE Co-Directors of GTCI, Mr Thabo Dikgale, Manager Internationalisation of the Directorate of International Relations and Partnerships, and Mr WANG Yuchen, Assistant of China Affairs in the VC’s Office. The purpose of the trip was to strengthen relations with Chinese counterparts and participate in strategic meetings which will advance UNIVEN’s research, teaching and learning and internationalisation objectives.
The delegation met with the Research Institute of Highway Ministry of Transport team led by Dr LI Mingliang, Director of Key Laboratory of Transport Industry of Road Structure Material. The two parties had an in-depth discussion and agreed to take water and environmental research as the starting point, combine China Africa cooperation, BRICS cooperation, and global southern government science and technology cooperation projects, and leverage their respective strengths to jointly enhance the capabilities of the research teams.

In the afternoon, the Vice-Chancellor and his delegation were hosted by Beihang Universi-ty led by the Vice President Professor HUANG Haijun at the Beijing campus. Beihang Univer-sity and UNIVEN will jointly lead a steering committee which will be tasked with drafting a joint research proposal on the “Joint Research Centre on Beidou Navigation Satellite Systems”.
On Tuesday, 22 April, the Vice-Chancellor and Principal led the UNIVEN delegation to a meeting with the Europe and Africa Center of the China International Communi-ty Group (CICG). Founded in October 1949, the CICG aims to introduce China’s devel-opment to the world and promote international exchanges with other countries. In the meeting, the two parties reached agreements on a variety of collaboratives areas.

In the meeting, the Vice-Chancellor and Principal was appointed as an Advisor to the Center for a two-year term. In this role, he will draw on his expertise to support the center’s efforts in ex-panding international communication channels, promoting cultural exchange and cooperation between China and the global community, and get the African voice heard in China and the globe.

The Visit to Beijing China culminated in a meeting with the Chinese International Education Foundation (CIEF). The purpose of the meeting was to provide comprehensive feedback to the Foundation on the recent activities at GTCI and to solicit funding for the institute. The CIEF delegation was led by the Secretary General, Mr ZHAO Lingshan. Prof SONG Xiaochun, Pres-ident of Hubei University of Technology (HBUT) and Amy Long, Director of Department of In-ternational Relations at HBUT also attended the meeting. Providing with the report, Prof Nth-ambeleni outlined the GTCI’s rapid growth and various achievements over the past year as well as the staff, space and infrastructure challenges GTCI faces. In response, Mr Zhao Ling-shan underscored that he is impressed by the progress made by the GTCI, and he indicated that CIEF is extremely confident that the GTCI will continue to grow and make a difference in society. “The GTCI can be assured of CIEF’s support through this journey”, said Mr Zhao.

The GTCI’s technical visit to Wuhan, Hubei Province saw a number of strategic meet-ings with HBUT staff members. During the morning of Thursday 24 April 2025, the UNI-VEN delegates visited the Grid-Forming Photovoltaic Engineering Training Base at HBUT and had a meeting with Professor ZENG Wei and colleagues from the Yingli So-lar Group. UNIVEN, HBUT and Yingli Group have signed a cooperation framework agree-ment and reached a preliminary intention to jointly establish a Sino-Africa Solar Joint Research Centre and other related projects involving research on solar cell efficiency.
In the afternoon of Thursday, the UNIVEN team, accompanied by Profes-sor WANG Chao from the School of Life Sciences and Health Engineering at HBUT, visited Wuhan Mingli Hefeng Food Co., Ltd., where they inspected the food processing production lines, and discussed future cooperation directions.

In the morning of Friday 25 April, the UNIVEN delegation attended the 2025 Afri-ca Job Fair for University Graduates in Hubei Province held at HBUT. The Vice-Chan-cellor and Principal was invited to deliver a keynote speech and subsequently inter-viewed by several news media on China-Africa cooperation and joint training of talents.

In the afternoon of Friday 25 April, the UNIVEN team met with the team of HBUT School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) led by Prof ZHANG Xiaoxing (Executive Dean) and the team of Guangxi Power Grid Electrical Power Research Institute led by Senior Engineer Mr. YIN Liqun. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the collaboration of the three par-ties in the intergovernmental international science and Technology Innovation cooperation key special project. Several other collaborative areas such as setting up Solar Energy Stor-age and Flexible Direct Current Transmission equipment at UNIVEN were also discussed.

Subsequently, the delegation visited the School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at HBUT and had on-site exchanges and discussions on cultivating innovative and entrepreneurial talents.

The team concluded its day with a discussion with the HBUT Department of Internation-al Relations and School of International Education. Led by Mr Dikgale, the discussion fo-cused on developing a joint framework for international student exchanges and joint de-grees. Both institutions agreed to establish joint degree programs starting in 2026, and a detailed schedule will be provided upon the finalization of internal discussions.

On Saturday 26 April, the UNIVEN delegation concluded its strategic meetings with the South-east University delegation led by Professor WANG Qilong, Executive Dean of the Institute of Regional and Country Studies. The two delegations held discussions on cooperation in teach-ing and research, cultural exchange, and mutual visits between teachers and students. The Vice Chancellor extended an invitation to Southeast University to visit UNIVEN this year.

Through this trip, UNIVEN has not only strengthened its ties with Chinese peers and other relevant educational institutions but also reached a series of agree-ments on cultural exchange, teacher-student visits, joint training of students, scien-tific research cooperation, and other aspects of collaboration, which will propel UNI-VEN to achieve its goals in teaching, scientific research, and internationalisation.

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