EAC and UNESCO renew commitment to enhance collaboration
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- Aug 7, 2024
- 2 min read
East African Community Headquarters, Arusha, Tanzania, 6th August, 2024: The East African Community (EAC) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) have reaffirmed their commitment to partner in areas of mutual interest to both organisations including education, health, culture, sports, music and the arts.
Consequently, both the EAC and UNESCO have committed to negotiate and sign a new Memorandum of Understanding to replace the one that was signed by both organisations in 2006.
Speaking when he paid a courtesy call on the EAC Secretary General, H.E. Veronica Nduva, in Arusha, Tanzania, the UNESCO Head of Office and Representative to Tanzania and the EAC, Mr. Michel Toto, said that the two organisations share similar priorities including promoting education, culture and the Kiswahili language as a lingua franca, in East Africa and globally.
Mr. Toto said that the MoU to be signed by the two organisations should be in line with the EAC and UNESCO’s priorities. He also called for expediting the negotiations, which he said were long overdue.
Mr. Toto further emphasised the role of education in promoting peace all over the world, adding that UNESCO would work with EAC to promote the usage of Kiswahili in East Africa and beyond.
Mr. Toto said that UNESCO was committed to strengthening its cooperation with EAC like has been the case with the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), partnerships that he said had yielded lots of mutual benefits to all parties.
In her remarks, the EAC Secretary General, H.E. Nduva, said that the EAC relies a lot on inputs by its development partners in planning and executing its key programmes and projects.
H.E. Nduva acknowledged UNESCO’s role in diverse sectors including gender, culture, education and health, and pointed out that EAC could benefit immensely through cooperation with UNESCO in these and other sectors.
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