Chinese Government provides RMB 86.1 million grant for Sénou Vocational and Technical Training Center Construction Project

Project narrative

In a set of letters that were exchanged on May 6, 2015 and August 4, 2015, the Government of the People's Republic of China agreed to provide a grant to the Government of the Republic of Mali for the Sénou Vocational and Technical Training Center Construction Project. Then, in December 2015, at the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that his government would finance the construction of the Center for Vocational Training (Construction du Centre de la Formation Professionnelle) in Mali. China’s Ministry of Commerce is the source of funding and it reportedly committed RMB 86,100,000 The center is located in the Modibo KEÏTA airport area of Bamako-Séno and it includes 29 classrooms, 39 office learning workshops, administrative offices, a sports field, a kitchen, a restaurant, a room for a transformer and the emergency generator and axillary rooms. It can accommodate the training of 350 students at a time. The project also involved the provision of furniture and equipment for the workshops. China Railway 9th Bureau was the contractor responsible for implementation. A project implementation agreement was signed in June 2016, and construction began on December 18, 2016. It completed the project in 17 months. A project handover ceremony was held on July 5, 2018.