The South China Morning Post published on 28 September 2019 an article titled "Scholarship Offers Driving China's Soft-power Play in Africa" by Jevans Nyabiage.
In 2018, the Chinese education ministry reported that more than 81,000 African students were studying in Chinese higher education institutions, many of them on scholarship. This was considerably more than were studying in the United States or the United Kingdom. This is China's way of reaching Africa's next generation of consumers and opinion leaders.