The Director General of Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (Maeci), Alexandre de Pedys, accompanied by the Italian Ambassador to Ethiopia, Agostino Palese, in recent days he visited the Italian Institute of Culture and the Italian State Institute “Galileo Galilei” in Addis Ababa, important tools for the dissemination and promotion of the Italian language and culture in Ethiopia. On the occasion of the visit, Director General De Pedys met with the managers, teaching staff and students, including those enrolled in the new technical education course in computer science and telecommunications, instituted on the occasion of the visit to Ethiopia of the Prime Minister. Minister, Giorgia Meloni. Director General De Pedys also met with the President of Addis Ababa University, Samuel Kifle, with whom he discussed the collaboration between the two countries on reforms in the education sector.
In addition to Ambassador Palese, the visit was attended by Massimo Riccardo, Special Envoy of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, for the Mattei Plan for Africa; the diplomatic staff of the Embassy and the Director of the State Multipurpose Institute “Galileo Galilei”, Marina Venturella. The Director of the Institute of Culture, Semen Kumurzhi, and his collaborators welcomed the delegation. The delegation visited the modern Auditorium “Giuseppe Verdi”, the library, the exhibition hall of the Institute and the Italian classrooms, where the Director General De Pedys was able to meet with the new Ethiopian Italian speakers. The Director of the Institute presented the current and upcoming linguistic and cultural activities, such as the concert by the pianist Marino Formenti and the exhibition by the Italian-Ethiopian artist Yared Olivelli. Finally, De Pedys was able to appreciate the various murals created by the Institute of Culture with the aim of beautifying the neighborhood, giving it a modern Italian artistic imprint (in particular with some augmented reality paintings that come to life on the screen of your smartphone, giving life to funny short films).
The Italian Cultural Institute of Addis Ababa, created in 1960 and operational since 1974, aims to promote and disseminate the Italian language and culture in Ethiopia through the organization of cultural events aimed at encouraging the circulation of ideas, arts and sciences. As for the “Galileo Galilei” institute in Addis Ababa, it is one of the seven Italian public schools currently active in the world, but the only one present outside Europe: the others are in fact located in Athens, Barcelona, Madrid, Istanbul, Paris and Zurich. Currently, over 900 students, aged between 19 and 70, attend the “Galilei” Institute in Addis Ababa and, starting from the next school year, two new ones will be added to the traditional programs in humanistic, classical, technical or scientific subjects: information technology and telecommunications. The Italian Public School of Addis Ababa – which this year celebrates its first years of activity – began its activity as a primary school in 1954 to guarantee education to the large Italian community then present in the Ethiopian capital. Subsequently, the college was established and, in the 1954s, the Technical Institute of Surveyors.
This article is originally published on agenzianova.com
