professionals from various sectors.
The first batch of 30 Tanzanian young professionals will attend a one-week programme consisting of expert lectures, field visits in Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
In addition, the professionals will have knowledge sharing sessions, focusing on areas crucial for Tanzania’s development, namely: green manufacturing, urban planning, information technology for international trade, tourism, and public health.
The Tanzania Leadership Programme is organised by PolyU’s Institute of Advanced Executive Education.
PolyU launched the Belt and Road Cross-Professional Advancement Programme in January 2019, providing a platform for Hong Kong’s professionals and Mainland enterprise leaders to exchange knowledge and share experience, as well as to network, explore market opportunities and develop multilateral collaborations.
The University also aims to leverage its expertise to share best practices and experiences with the high-potential future leaders of other Belt and Road countries such as Tanzania.
The opening ceremony of the Programme was officiated by the Ambassador of the United Republic of Tanzania in the People’s Republic of China and the Executive Vice President of PolyU.
Addressing the ceremony, the Executive VP stated that PolyU has been playing its role to nurture young talents for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since 2014.
The platform was established to leverage PolyU’s expertise and international network for capacity building and thereby fostering talent development, knowledge transfer and research development for the sustainable advancement of the Belt and Road countries.
This Programme is one of the institute’s initiatives to offer cross-cultural youth leadership programmes to Tanzania future global leaders.
She added that there were more than 700 students from the Belt and Road countries last year in PolyU, some of them were from Africa. Apart from academic programmes, PolyU also supports enterprises and professionals to embrace the opportunities arising from the BRI. Since 2014, the University has offered more than 390 consultancy services and executive training to organisations from Belt and Road countries.
Being one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies, Tanzania has a strategic role in the BRI. It was noted that the country is in need the kind of youth with vigour and zeal prevalent in Hong Kong that is required to make a difference and transform it from where it is to a more prosperous nation.
This begins with learning new ideas and new ways and from new experiences. It was noted that Hong Kong was perfectly fit for this. In particular, the Institute of Advanced Executive Education and the PolyU.
Under the Programme, the Tanzanian participants will conduct field trips related to the five focused areas of the Programme, such as visiting PolyU’s innovative facilities, the City Gallery (displaying the vision for the city’s planning projects), Shatin (one of the new towns in Hong Kong that exhibits a success case in town planning) as well as textile upcycling factory (using innovative technologies to provide a solution for textile waste recycling).
In addition, the team will visit a facility that will showcase the emerging tech of a smartphone giant.
By the end of the Programme, the young professionals, from varied sectors ranging from telecommunications, information technology, marketing, social enterprise, manufacturing, sustainability, finance, tourism to public health, will also work on action plans for specific areas of development in Tanzania.
The Programme will run in a series, each will cater to a cohort of 30 Tanzanian young professionals. PolyU’s Institute of Advanced Executive Education is also planning to extend similar training to other Belt and Road countries.
