The Diplomat
The Cervantes Institute inaugurated the Cervantes Classroom in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) this Wednesday, June 10th, making it the institution’s second permanent presence in Sub-Saharan Africa, after Dakar.
The opening of the classroom, located at the Félix Houphouët-Boigny University in the Ivorian capital, was formalized with the signing of an agreement between the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, and the president of the African university, Ballo Zié, in the presence of the director of the Cervantes Institute in Dakar, Concha Barceló, and the Spanish ambassador to Ivory Coast, Guillermo Marín Gorbea.
“I want to thank the entire Cervantes team at the various locations in Dakar and Abidjan, and everyone who made this possible. The word ‘thank you’ is linked to coexistence, commitment, and fraternity, and we like to work in this spirit, as well as in terms of freedom and equality,” declared García Montero.
According to data from the latest Cervantes Institute Yearbook, one in ten students of Spanish worldwide is in Africa. Ivory Coast leads the continent with 798,095 students, followed by Benin (412,515), Cameroon (403,000), Senegal (356,224), and Gabon (200,000).
In Ivory Coast, around two-thirds of students studying a second foreign language are studying Spanish. Furthermore, the academic and institutional collaboration developed in recent years has allowed the Instituto Cervantes to expand its activities in the country, including the launch of AVE courses to prepare students for the DELE exams and the sustained growth in the number of candidates for these official Spanish exams.
The main function of the Abidjan Cervantes Center will be to teach Spanish by offering general and specialized language courses in face-to-face, hybrid, or online formats. It will also offer official Spanish certification, facilitating access to the DELE exams (Diploma of Spanish as a Foreign Language), a significant advantage for students’ professional integration and international mobility.
In addition, it will offer methodological and pedagogical refresher programs for the thousands of Spanish teachers in the country, and the agreement includes the organization of academic and cultural activities aimed at promoting the Spanish language and the culture of Spanish-speaking countries.
In July 2023, the Cervantes Institute and the Félix Houphouët-Boigny University in Ivory Coast signed a collaboration agreement, which was modified the following year to specify the new spaces the university would make available to the Institute, as well as the necessary renovations. The construction project and the installation of furniture began in 2024, the work was carried out throughout 2025, and the renovation of the multipurpose room was completed in 2026.
