Chinese Government provides $7 million grant for E-Education Project

Project narrative

In 2014, the Government of North Macedonia and the Chinese Government signed an agreement for an E-Education Project. Then, in November 2016, the Chinese Government and the Macedonian Ministry of Education and Science signed an implementation agreement for the E-Education Project. China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) committed approximately $7 million of grant funding for this project. The purpose of this project was to equip 27 schools (23 of which are located in the city of Skopje) with ‘smart classrooms’, including personal computers, laptops, interactive whiteboards, wireless networking devices and e-learning systems. It also involved the installation of a cloud storage and computing center. The ultimate objective of the project was to improve local education, particularly in mountainous and rural areas, and promote balanced distribution of education resources. Huawei was the general contractor responsible for implementation. It appears to have hired Tianwen Digital Media as a subcontractor. The project commenced on April 21, 2017, and it was implemented in two phases. The first phase was completed in June 2017. The second phase was launched in April 2018. On July 10, 2019, a formal project handover ceremony was held at the School of Computer Science of Skopje University.