Italy considers education to be one of the central goals of the United Nations 2030 sustainable development agenda, Italy's deputy foreign minster Emanuela Del Re said on Thursday.
“Italy has always been on the front line in these themes,” Del Re told the chief executive officer of the Global Partnership for Education fund, Alice Albright, according to a statement from the foreign ministry.
Italy will commit to keeping education among the top priorities of the G7 and proposed to develop partnerships in sub-Saharan Africa and especially in the Horn of Africa, Del Re underlined to Albright, according to the statement.
Albright thanked Del Re for Italy’s support for the GPE's activities and said she was ready to strengthen cooperation with Italy on specific issues such as the empowerment of women, a key plank of Italy’s development policy, the statement said.
Besides its contribution to the GPE fund, Italy's support to education in developing countries is "broad-reaching and diversified", said the statement.
The GPE is the major international partnership aimed at boosting access to education in developing countries, to which Italy contributed almost 47 million euros when it was created in 2002.
