Chinese: the language of choice for Sudanese students

We've all heard about students around the world who aspire to learn English so they can get well-paying jobs. But for students in Sudan, the language to learn is Chinese.

Sudan sells around 60 percent of its oil to China, and Chinese companies, products, and restaurants have made inroads into the African country. Sudanese university students who learn Chinese can get jobs as translators and work for Chinese oil and telecommunications companies. Recently, Khartoum University had a Chinese speech competition, and a Chinese professor there said, "… nearly 100% of students who graduate from the department get jobs with Chinese companies." In a troubled country like Sudan, that prospect is a great motivator to learn the language.

More than a billion people speak Mandarin Chinese, and the Chinese government actively promotes the language as a way of extending its influence. The country has sent hundreds of teachers to Africa, and it has established "Confucius Institutes" around the globe to encourage speaking the language.

And the trend to learn Mandarin Chinese isn't limited to Sudan. In Britain, the number of university students studying Chinese more than doubled from 2002 to 2005. Other Western countries have had similar increases.

In the near term, Mandarin isn't going to displace English as the world's global language. But at the end of the day, money talks. A few decades from now, money could be talking in yuan, not dollars.