Eduardo González
The Instituto Cervantes and the Ibero-American University Foundation (FUNIBER) have committed to strengthening the training of Spanish teachers in Angola.
The director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, and the president of the Ibero-American University Foundation (FUNIBER), Santos Gracia Villar, signed an agreement this past Thursday to reinforce Ibero-American cultural cooperation and teacher training in Lusophone countries, so especially in Angola.
The reinforcement of Spanish teachers in sub-Saharan Africa is “an area in which we have a lot to develop,” declared García Montero. Likewise, he highlighted the interest of this general action protocol, which is valid for four years and is part of the “Academic Missions”, an initiative of the Cervantes Institute that is developed in places “where we still do not have a regular presence, but we are going to train teachers and publish in Spanish.”
The Academic Missions are the result of the agreement reached in 2019 by the Cervantes Institute and the AECID, through the ACERCA Training Program for development in the cultural sector, in order to implement a training project for trainers in Spanish as a foreign language. in sub-Saharan Africa. Throughout this time, more than ten Academic Missions have been held in various countries in the region, such as Ivory Coast, Benin, Gabon, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, Mozambique, DR Congo and Angola (in this case, in 2023).
Sub-Saharan Africa is, with more than one and a half million students, the third region in the world in number of Spanish students. Despite this, the Cervantes Institute had to wait until December 2021 to open its first center in the region, specifically in Dakar. Apart from this center in Senegal, the Institute’s presence in Sub-Saharan Africa is limited to the Aula Cervantes in Abidjan (Ivory Coast).
For his part, Gracia Villar highlighted the opportunity to teach Spanish in a bilingual education framework and advocated being “creative” when promoting university relations between Angola and Spain that “foster interculturality and generate synergies.”
The joint work of teaching, organization of cultural activities and programs to promote reading and help with translation will be articulated mainly through collaboration with the International University of Cuanza (Cuito, Angola), an entity belonging to the FUNIBER network.
FUNIBER is an international institution for educational, cultural and technical cooperation focused essentially on the field of higher university education, which develops its mission in favor of the societies of numerous countries of different cultures and civilizations. It is based mainly in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking nations—the multinational Iberophony Space—and promotes academic, scientific, cultural and research activities, as well as comprehensive cooperation projects, social development and the promotion of economic growth.
