Aidan Davitt (Fianna Fail)
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I am curious about the big geopolitical shift away from the old powerhouses of, say, France in Mali and Burkina Faso and the big shift to a new generation in terms of China and Russia and the money they have rolled out throughout Africa. I am curious to learn about what China and Russia are doing in these areas because we do not tend to hear that much about them. Are China and Russia interested in educating people? Apart from infrastructure and the resources that these two countries have pumped into governments and whatever else, I am curious to hear about what is happening in the region. Heretofore, the old regimes provided a certain number of educational programmes and whatever else but we have not heard about China and Russia doing much of that. How do they view education? Are they trying to educate these people up? Is education on their radar at all?