Eduardo González
Queen Letizia will leave tomorrow for Mauritania to make her seventh cooperation trip since 2015, where she will be able to learn first-hand about the work of Spanish Cooperation in the areas of health, gender equality, rural development and food security.
The trip will take place from May 31 to June 2 and Doña Letizia will travel accompanied by the State Secretary for International Cooperation (SECI), Pilar Cancela. This is the seventh cooperation trip made by the Queen, who has recovered a custom started by Queen Sofia in 1997. Previously, Doña Letizia traveled to Honduras and El Salvador (2015), Senegal (2017), Dominican Republic and Haiti (2018), Mozambique (2019), again Honduras (2020) and Paraguay (late 2021). Last Thursday, the Queen held at the Zarzuela Palace a preparatory working meeting for this trip with Pilar Cancela, the director of AECID, Antón Leis, and the director of Cooperation with Africa and Asia of AECID, Carmen Magariños.
Mauritania is listed in the directory of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) in the group of Least Developed Countries. Mauritania has been a priority country for Spanish Cooperation since 1995, when the first joint development and anti-poverty initiatives were launched, and is a strategic partner within the Sahel with which Spain collaborates in promoting development, both bilaterally and through the Sahel Alliance. Twelve Spanish NGODs operate in Mauritania, working in the sectors of rural development and food security, health and gender.
The Queen will arrive tomorrow in Nouakchott. According to official sources, the activities will really begin on Wednesday with a visit to the Technical Cooperation Office (OTC), inaugurated in 1998 and which currently manages a portfolio of 32 projects under implementation for a value of more than 36 million euros, with funds from the EU delegated cooperation. Queen Letizia, who will be accompanied by the Spanish Ambassador, Miriam Álvarez de la Rosa, will meet with the staff and representatives of Doctors of the World and the World Food Program.
Afterwards, the Queen will visit the Fish Distribution Project, a flagship program of Spanish Cooperation to improve the eating habits of the Mauritanian population, accompanied by the Minister of Social Action, Childhood and Family, Safia N’Tahah, and the Minister of Fisheries and Marine Economy, Mhamed Abdidine Mayif.
Afterwards, the Queen and Minister N’Tahah will visit the Integral Project of attention to the victims of gender violence, in which the Ministries of Interior of the two countries collaborate, and will later visit the University of Nouakchott together with the First Lady of the Republic, Mariam Mint Ahmed, and the Minister of Social Action, as well as several officials of AECID, to see several training projects for medical specialists in the Faculty of Medicine and the project of the gender observatory in the Faculty of Legal and Economic Sciences.
The Queen Letizia will later visit the Promopêche project, a program for the promotion of artisanal fishing in protected natural areas, financed by the EU Emergency Trust Fund for the fight against the root causes of irregular migration in Africa and managed by AECID, the German Cooperation Agency (GIZ) and the World Labor Organization (ILO). On this visit, the Queen will be accompanied by the Ministers of Social Action and Fisheries and Maritime Economy and by the EU Ambassador to Mauritania, Gwilym Jones. The intense first day of the trip will conclude with a meeting with representatives of the Spanish Cooperation at the residence of the Spanish Embassy, where she will be received by the Ambassador.
The second day will begin with a visit to the Agricultural Production project, a pilot program supported by Spanish Cooperation with EU funds, and will continue at the Emergency Center of the Emergency Medical Care Service (SAMU), a pre-hospital service that did not exist in the country and in which AECID provides technical support to the Mauritanian Ministry of Health. The service was launched at the end of 2021 with the collaboration of the Municipal Emergency and Rescue Municipal Assistance Service (SAMUR) of Madrid and the Andalusian Health Service. The cooperation trip will conclude with a working lunch hosted by the First Lady of Mauritania, Mariam Mint Ahmed, in honor of the Queen.
