He will present to politicians, businessmen, hispanists and the media the plans to strengthen the presence of the Spanish language in a country strategic for the expansion of this language.

Luis García Montero to present in Dakar the Cervantes Institute's arrival in sub-Saharan Africa

photo_camera Instituto Cervantes Senegal

The Cervantes Institute is ready to land in sub-Saharan Africa with a working visit by its director next week to Dakar (Senegal), where the Aula Cervantes, operating since 2010, will soon become the centre of the Institute. On his first trip to the Senegalese capital, Luis García Montero will explain to political leaders, businesspeople, hispanists and the media the plans to strengthen the institution's presence in a country strategic in the expansion of our language in Africa and a priority for Spanish cooperation. 

García Montero will be accompanied by a large team of Cervantes managers, including the Secretary General, Culture and Academic Directors and the Director of the Cabinet. The visit, which aims to strengthen cultural and academic links and exchanges and to present Spanish as a language of future social and labour relations for the African population, comes just a few days after the official trip to Senegal made by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya.

The working agenda will open on Monday 30th, when García Montero will meet with Spanish language students at the Aula Cervantes in Dakar, most of them students from the Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD), where the school is located. The Spanish Section of the Department of Romance Languages at this university has around 4,000 students of Hispanic languages. 

García Montero will then hold a meeting with the media, both local journalists and correspondents from Spain and other countries, to whom he will explain the plans and objectives of the new centre. The growing interest in learning Spanish will also be discussed: Senegal, with 205,000 students of Spanish, is the third country in sub-Saharan Africa with the most students of our language, only behind the Ivory Coast (566,000) and Benin (412,000). 

García Montero will then meet with representatives of Spanish businesspeople in Senegal who form part of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Senegal (CAMACOES), created this year, 2020.

The first day's busy agenda will conclude with a meeting with the Senegalese Minister of Culture, which will also be attended by the Spanish Ambassador, Olga Cabarga Gómez. 

The tribune of Senegalese Hispanism 

On Tuesday 1 December, the Tribune of Senegalese Hispanism will be held at the Cheikh Anta Diop University and will be inaugurated (at 10:30 am, Spanish mainland time) by Rector Ahmadou Aly Mbaye, the Spanish Ambassador and the Director of the Cervantes Institute in Dakar, Néstor Nongo Nsala.  

The participants in the Tribune will be Professors Ndioro Sow, Georgette Ndour and Nzachée Noumbissi, moderated by the Academic Director of the Cervantes Institute, Carmen Pastor. The event will close with a dialogue by Luis García Montero with the professors and hispanists attending. 

 Tuesday's activities will be broadcast live between 10:30 am and 1 pm (Spanish mainland time) on the Cervantes Institute's channels (Directo 1 on the website's homepage and YouTube channel).
 

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