This book is an account of China's support to education and training in Africa. Not just an account but a discussion about How and Why it is doing this. But it is not an account of schools or training institutions run by China in Africa, as it might be of American international schools, French Lycées, German schools or British schools. China, like Japan, has built schools in Africa, but it doesn't run them. It hands them over to local ministries of education. The same is true of the few institutions of tertiary education that China has built in Africa. Even the Confucius Institutes in Africa are not run by China; they are directed jointly by Chinese and national deans as parts of their host universities.

Nor is it an account of China's involvement in education sector support, or in what other development agencies have termed sector-wide approaches (SWAPs) in education (co-ordinated external support to the education sector). China does not follow other agencies in this aid modality or in aid coordination. Nor does it pursue large-scale project approaches in the manner of the United States or of Germany.

Rather, this is an account of how China perceives and implements educational cooperation or human resource development for Africa. So the book uses the same lens that China uses to define this cooperation, and like China, it pays attention to the history of this cooperation over the last sixty years.