The Diplomat
The State Secretary for International Cooperation, Ángeles Moreno Bau, met yesterday in Madrid with the Mauritanian Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Information Technology, Sidi Ould Salem, who is visiting Spain to strengthen relations of educational, cultural and scientific cooperation between the two countries.
Sidi Ould Salem, who is also a government spokesman, began a working visit to Spain yesterday, during which he will also meet, over the course of the week, with the Minister of Universities, Manuel Castells; the Director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero; the Director of Casa Árabe, Pedro Martínez-Avial; the regional president of Murcia, Fernando López Miras; and the rectors of several Spanish universities.
During their meeting, Sidi Ould Salem and Ángeles Moreno Bau discussed Spanish Cooperation’s support for the knowledge of Spanish among university students and academics, and the Instituto Cervantes’ online training. In this regard, the Secretary of State stressed the importance of educational exchanges for the teaching of Spanish, which is in great demand in Mauritania, and she anticipated the possibility of opening an Aula Cervantes (Cervantes Classroom) in Nouakchott in the future. At present, the Instituto Cervantes’ representations in Africa are limited to its centres in the north of the continent (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt) and the Aula Cervantes in Dakar, which opened in 2010 and will become its first centre in Sub-Saharan Africa later this year.
The meeting also addressed bilateral cooperation in the fight against the digital divide and the digitisation of education from primary and secondary levels, which entails “a necessary investment in technology and connectivity”. According to the Secretary of State, Spain has supported the fibre optic connection of the Nouakchott Al Aasriya University with the Spanish academic network IRIS and the European network GEANT, a connection that is made through the node of the Canary Islands Institute of Technology and the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Another item on the agenda was the possibility of new agreements in the sector of culture for development and AECID’s support for the conservation of the ancient manuscript libraries of Chinguetti, in Mauritania, repositories of texts of religious, philosophical, scientific and linguistic content, a project initiated in 2016 and which has been implemented in two phases.
