Essaouira – ‘The adoption in Essaouira of the founding statutes of the International Academy of Scientific Francophonie (AIFS) will go down in the history of the city’, Advisor to HM the King and Chairman of the AIFS Board f Directors André Azoulay stated on Thursday.
Welcoming the choice of Essaouira for the Academy’s first Board meeting, Azoulay highlighted that Morocco’s 2021/2022 bid to host the AIFS headquarters was voted and institutionalized, thus making the Kingdom one of the first strategic partners of the Francophone University Agency (AUF) .
Stressing the strategic nature of AIFS’s scope of action, which includes over 1,000 universities and scientific academies on every continent, HM the King’s Advisor underlined ‘the decisive weight of the countries of the South in this area, which aspires to a diverse Francophonie in tune with the potential and expectations of the upcoming generations, therefore opening up new horizons for the French-speaking world of science, so far marginalized in terms of s
tatus and referential visibility in recognized and indexed publications with authority in the field’.
‘Challenges are numerous’, Azoulay said, “but they resonated here in Essaouira, thanks to the strengths of a diverse Francophonie for Science and Research, bolstered by its youth and ambitions, who will now find in Morocco-based AIFS the promise of a partnership keen to enhance the richness and diversity of a scientific Francophonie on the move”.
Held in the emblematic ‘Bayt Dakira’ space, the first session of the AIFS Board of Directors, a new frame piloted by AUF, adopted the founding statutes of this institution inaugurated in 2023 and headquartered in Rabat.
The meeting brought together some thirty members of the Board of Directors, including renowned experts, professors and academics from all over the world.
An international conference on the mobility of young researchers was also held on the issues surrounding access to academic mobility opportunities, scientific cooperation and the challenges assoc
iated with administrative, financial and logistical obstacles.
Source: Agence Marocaine De Presse