SISU teaches a new language to serve Belt and Road Initiative

Shanghai International Studies University will begin teaching Kiswahili this year, making it the 28th language it teaches.

It will recruit 10 to 12 undergraduate students once every four years and the first class of students are expected to be admitted in the upcoming fall semester.

Students will learn not only listening, speaking, reading and writing with the language, but also its literature, politics, economy and social life.

The university is the first in Shanghai to offer education on Kiswahili, a Bantu dialect and one of the African languages spoken by the largest number of people along with Arabic and Hausa. 

As a working language of the African Union, it’s spoken by more than 100 million people in the world, including in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique and other African countries.

The program of Kiswahili is part of SISU’s efforts to cultivate talent of a foreign language to serve the Belt and Road Initiative.

In the past three years, the university has set up majors of Hungarian, Polish, Kazak, Uzbek and introductory courses about Sanskrit, Urdu, Javanese, etc.