With thousands of foreigners stranded in Wuhan, and with richer countries like the United States and Japan preparing to evacuate some citizens, hundreds of African peers have a little chance of a similar escape. Beijing’s push to expand its influence on the youthful African continent means Africans now make up the second-largest population of foreign students in China, behind those from elsewhere in Asia, according to China’s education ministry. In 2018 African students numbered more than 80,000. More than 4,000 are estimated to be in Wuhan alone. None of them expected this. No one knows how long the lockdown will last, or all the ways the virus can spread. So Bakari and a small committee of fellow doctors from his East African country regularly send updates on social media about the outbreak to the more than 400 Tanzanian students in Wuhan, as well as hundreds of countrymen elsewhere in China.
SOURCE: VOA