This is not the first time African competitors have taken part in skills competitions in China. Their active participation offers a glimpse of growing China-Africa cooperation in vocational education, which has helped endow many Africans with practical skills and opportunities.

　　This photo taken on Nov. 14, 2025 shows a scene at the final of the World Vocational College Skills Competition in Tianjin, north China. (Xinhua/Zhao Zishuo)

　　LEARNING THROUGH PRACTICE

　　At the 2025 World Vocational College Skills Competition held in north China's Tianjin, Angolan student Massak Ventura Noquena Eduardo took silver on the strength of industrial robotics and automated production-line skills learned from Chinese teachers. "I hope to apply what I have learned to Angola's industrialization," he said.

　　The skills that carried him to the podium are among the everyday subjects in classrooms that China and Africa run together. At the Angola-China Institute of Technology, students study mechatronics, industrial robotics and automation.

　　Guo Xiaoyu, a teacher from Baotou Vocational and Technical College in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, remembers students who were at first hesitant to even use a multimeter or an oscilloscope.

　　"Vocational education cannot be based on theory alone. Students have to do things with their own hands," Guo said. After a semester of practice in circuit assembly and fault diagnosis, more than 90 percent of them met the required standard.

　　At Ethiopia's Holeta Polytechnic College, Chinese instructor Ma Yujie demonstrated surgical suturing as animal science students gathered around the table, taking turns practicing on training pads.