Growing food in a quickly changing world is one focus for young scientists touring China this week. They're visiting from 18 African countries learning about things like new-age farming and robotic science. CGTN's Sun Ye has more on the one thing they say any developing country must have.

Vertical farming allows farmers to grow more crops in less space. And, that's what caught Ernest Mpundu's attention as he along with more than twenty young African science workers toured one of Beijing's signature science industrial parks.

ERNEST MPUNDU NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY REPUBLIC OF RWANDA "Seventy to eighty percent of our people work on the land, still in the traditional way. I think vertical farming would help provide for more people."

He says he will make vertical farming technology one of his policy suggestions when he goes back.

Latifatu Mohammed says that, for her country's science sector to boom, it needs proper funding alignments -- like China.

LATIFATU MOHAMMED COUNCIL FOR SCIENTIFIC & INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH INST. OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH, GHANA "China-Africa cooperation can help us create things of our own and we need to create on our own. And, seeing how China has developed, I figure what it did right is channeling funding to the right place."

Both agree that the key to scientific growth is raising talent.

ERNEST MPUNDU NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY REPUBLIC OF RWANDA "Talent is the most important thing. Having talent almost automatically solves all the other problems."

When the group visited China's prestigious Tsinghua University, they asked one important question: how can they effectively nurture world-class talent?

PROF. WANG SUNYU GENERAL-SECRETARY, INTL. CENTER FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION "China and African countries are all developing countries. We have similar problems. And how best to coach talent is the most important one. China's fast advances in science have shown that its ways with talent works. For one, we heavily invest in not only high-level education but also education at all levels. And we are happy to share some of our experience with them."

The African visitors will head to other top research facilities, looking for lessons as well as opportunities in cooperation.

AMB. KUANG WEILIN FMR. CHINESE AMBASSADOR TO AFRICAN UNION "African countries tend to invest more in roads, bridges, infrastructure. But it's investing in science and technology that will help the economy leap into the future. Here we also envision a lot of opportunities between China and Africa."

SY, CGTN, BJ.