With little more than two months to go before the central conference of the Interregional Dialogue on Education and Development in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa to be held in Addis Ababa, OBREAL participated in the 3rd General Conference of ENLACES. A conference that aims to ‘raise awareness of the need to internalize and defend the concept of higher education as a social good, a human right and a duty of states’.
The director of the OBREAL Office for South America, present in one panel
OBREAL participated in the ENLACES General Conference with Anahí Astur, Director of the OBREAL Office for South America. Astur has been part of one of the panels.. Specifically, the one that addressed the topic of “Science and Technology, a condition for the development of countries and the basis for South-South cooperation”.
During her speech, some excerpts of which can be seen in the videos accompanying this article, Astur detailed various experiences of regional cooperation and integration, highlighting, for example, the MERCOSUR study nucleus. She also highlighted the series of Interregional Dialogues organized and promoted by OBREAL. In this regard, Astur explained that since the end of 2022 OBREAL has been working to bring together political, university and intergovernmental spheres.
The director of OBREAL’s office for South America explained that this interregional dialogue is currently taking the form of more specific actions. In the context of the central conference that will be held in July in Addis Ababa, OBREAL has developed a series of interregional courses on topics of great international importance.
The importance of South-South dialogue
OBREAL works to promote cooperation and dialogue between regions in higher education and development. And we do so from the conviction that this dialogue must start from the different souths. Hence the importance of OBREAL’s office for South America.
In this regard, Anahí Astur emphasizes the need to generate a dialogue between Latin America and Africa. While being aware of the difficulties that this objective presents, Astur assures that achieving it will entail the ‘constitution of an identity and a work agenda of its own that facilitates inter-regional dialogue’.
