The visit of the Vice President of the Republic, Francia Márquez Mina, and her Colombian delegation to South Africa concluded with a very positive balance. The high representative held different high-level meetings with important actors with whom significant progress and results were achieved for both countries in terms of international cooperation.
These achievements include the signing of six (6) memorandums of understanding, of which are the Memorandum of Understanding between the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce; the Declaration of Intent for the Promotion of Trade and Investments between Trade & Investment KwaZulu-Natal and the Chamber of Commerce of Buenaventura, Chocó, Tumaco, San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina as well as the Declaration of Intent for the Promotion of Music, Arts and Dance between the Petronio Álvarez Pacific Music Festival and the World Festival of Music, Arts and Dance (WOMAD).
Likewise, in education issues and with the purpose of advancing in the internationalization of Higher Education, the Vice Minister of Higher Education, Carolina Quijano, signed a Cooperation Alliance with the Vice Minister of Education of South Africa, with whom it is expected to work in an articulated manner in exchange topics among which stand out: seminars, workshops, conferences, visits by experts, promotion of educational mobility scholarships offered by both countries, teaching English and Spanish, as well as establishing a network of Colombian-African universities, among others.
In the same way, the high president also held a high-level meeting with the President and Vice President, who also agreed to be guarantors of the peace process in Colombia with the ELN. As a result of this meeting between senior leaders, different intentions to work together were materialized, among which are: restarting political consultations, visas, air connectivity, biodiversity and climate change, cultural and memory exchanges, educational scholarships, sports , tourism and popular economy.
The vice president, during this busy agenda, visited several memory spaces, including Freedom Park, the Museum of Historical Memory of Apartheid and Constitution Hill, today the cultural center of the Ubuntu Unity forum.
This is how this agenda for South Africa ends and the Vice President and her delegation from Colombia are preparing to arrive in Kenya on Sunday, May 14, where it is also expected to hold parallel agendas and continue deepening South-South cooperation relations, exchange and mutual learning.