STORY: China, Egypt cooperate in agricultural equipment, technology for saline-alkali land
SHOOTING TIME: April 9, 2024
DATELINE: April 25, 2024
LENGTH: 0:02:31
LOCATION: JINAN, China
CATEGORY: TECHNOLOGY

SHOTLIST:
1. various of Hani Mehanna
2. SOUNDBITE 1 (English): HANI MEHANNA, Deputy chief engineer of YRDIA
3. SOUNDBITE 2 (English): HANI MEHANNA, Deputy chief engineer of YRDIA

STORYLINE:

Hani Mehanna, an agricultural engineer with Egypt's National Research Center, has 23 years of experience in agricultural engineering.

He became an engineer at the Yellow River Delta Intelligent Agricultural Machinery Equipment Industry Research Academy (YRDIA) after arriving in Dongying City of east China's Shandong Province in 2023.

With the help of Chinese colleagues, the Egyptian engineer has completed his first agricultural equipment modification for saline-alkaline land exploitation.

SOUNDBITE 1 (English): HANI MEHANNA, Deputy chief engineer of YRDIA
"I wake up normally at 7:30, then go to my office and start to do the design of some machines like peanut harvester and garlic harvester, and both are harvesting machines. It's hard to design actual machines. But with the cooperation and help of the dean of YRDIA, my institute here, and Chinese teamwork, I'm doing well.
So this mower is for land preparation, for the new crop cultivation. And this mower was just made by the teamwork here, I was one of them, just made it on solid works as drawing and then manufactured as you see here.
We did it to be suitable for saline and alkali soil here because it needs special treatment."

China's Yellow River Delta has around 7 million mu (467,000 hectares) of saline-alkaline land in Shandong, while most of Egypt's territory remains desert.

Modern agricultural machinery and technologies are needed to improve agricultural production on both kinds of barren soils.

Highlighting the importance of cooperation between the two countries and the potential to use Chinese technology for sustainable agriculture in Africa, Mehanna said that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) provides a new path for win-win cooperation.

SOUNDBITE 2 (English): HANI MEHANNA, Deputy chief engineer of YRDIA
"The Belt and Road Initiative is a very good strategy. It will be a win-win example and a new instrument for all the Chinese technology in our country in a practical way, also to know what is the Chinese farming technology now in a practical way. Also, (we plan) to establish Chinese farm machinery service stations in Egypt and other African countries."

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Jinan, China.
(XHTV)