Yesterday, the Ambassador of Italy in Tripoli Gianluca Alberini and the Minister of Education of the Government of National Unity Musa AlMaqarif inaugurated at the Bashir Alusta High School in Tripoli a programme to introduce the Italian language into Libya’s secondary schools, starting in Tripoli, Benghazi, Khoms and Misurata.
The programme, fruit of the 2020 Memorandum signed by the Ministries of Education of the two countries, kicked off with the recruitment of 156 Libyan teachers, trained in Italy at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the University for Foreigners of Siena to teach Italian.
“An ambitious goal that marks a new and important chapter in the cultural relations between our two countries, aiming to train a new generation open to cooperation and cultural exchange”, said Ambassador Alberini expressing his satisfaction for the initiative, which is the result of joint work carried out in recent years by an Italy-Libya Steering Committee set up on the basis of the 2020 Memorandum with the aim of obtaining optimal results from the project and facilitating mutual knowledge of the teaching and learning systems, methodologies and curricula in the two countries.
A joint technical table with experts in the field from both countries met last week to guarantee, in collaboration with Italian universities specialised in teaching Italian as a foreign language, an educational programme in line with local needs, and focusing on the quality of teaching, to be achieved thanks to a curriculum tailored to Libyan students and defined on the basis of the syllabus drawn up by the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in 2022.
In line with the support already provided to the various Departments of Italian Studies in the country’s main universities, the Italian Embassy is committed to supporting the teaching of the Italian language through training and refresher courses held in Libya for Libyan teachers teaching Italian, which started last July, and through the granting of scholarships in Italy for young Libyan graduates interested in Italian culture and language (110 scholarships granted in 2024).
