Since the first Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, China has stepped up its cooperation with Africa in human resources development and achieved great success in this regard. In 2004, China's Ministry of Commerce offered 100 training courses to over 1,600 African people from different professions. Among that, there were 57 multilateral technical courses training 584 people, 3 bilateral technical courses training 55 people and 40 multilateral courses training 1,007 officials. The number of African students trained under those courses in 2004 was 4.4 times that of 2003 and accounted for 80% of the total of the past 20 years (2,047 African students were trained between 1983 and 2003). In addition, other Chinese Ministries provided training for 800 African professionals, taking the total number of African professionals trained in 2004 to over 2,400 and laying a good foundation for realizing the goal of "training 10,000 people in 3 years for Africa".

In 2005, China will continue to scale up personnel training for Africa. The Ministry of Commerce is planning to run more than 130 training courses for over 3,000 African professionals, among which 73 would be study programs for 1,757 African officials and 48 technical training courses for over 1,000 people. Moreover, over a dozen training programs will be added as needed for over 300 professionals. The study programs for African officials will mainly cover economic management, science and technology, telecommunication, e-commerce, public administration, finance, customs, Development Zones, traditional medicine, disease control, environmental protection, tourism, agriculture, forestry, meteorology, geology and textile. Technical training will focus on such fields as solar power, water-efficient irrigation, water pollution control, edible fungus, desert management, animal husbandry, pest prevention and control, health, vegetable growing, application of computer network, mini-hydropower station, fish-farming, paddy rice growing maintenance of agricultural machinery and food security. In the meantime, the Chinese side will raise the ratio of African officials coming to China for study, expand the scope of training and give priority to training courses with high technical content such as agriculture, energy, medicine, telecommunication, and bio-technology. On top of that, the Chinese side will optimize the design of curriculum, well arrange the students' schedule in China and improve the quality of service and management, with a view to making the training most effective.