The President of the Republic, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, expressed today, Tuesday in Istanbul, within the framework of his state visit to Turkey, at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart, his hope that relations of cooperation between Algerian and Turkish universities would intensify.
During the ceremony of receiving an honorary doctorate from Istanbul University, the President of the Republic expressed his hope that relations between Algerian and Turkish universities would intensify, recalling the decision he took and conveyed to the Minister of Higher Education and the university deans that “the Algerian university today is independent and chooses the twinning that suits it.”
The President of the Republic expressed his happiness at standing in the precincts of the prestigious Istanbul University, which he described as “a niche of the niches of science and a pole of human civilization where students of science and knowledge visit to stand on the ancient civilization of the sisterly Republic of Turkey.”
The President of the Republic expressed his thanks to the officials of Istanbul University for the honorary doctorate, wishing them success in taking care of this university “to remain an ancient teacher and witness to the originality of the Turkish state and its keeping up with modernity that is manifested in Turkey’s progress and development under the wise leadership of His Excellency, my dear brother Tayyip Racep Erdogan.”
In this context, he mentioned that the foundations of the Algerian revolution and the national liberation movement from brutal French colonialism were its beginnings of education, at the hands of Sheikh and Imam Abdelhamid Ben Badis, also reminding that “ignorance is a tool of colonialism, with evidence that French colonialism mastered in planting ignorance among the Algerians.”
When Algeria regained its sovereignty and independence, the president adds, the number of illiterate Algerians represented 90 percent of the citizens, before Algeria launched very strong programs in the framework of educating the sons and daughters of Algeria on the basis that “real freedom is education.”
The number of Algerian students in 1956 moved from 1,800 to more than 1,700,000 today in various Algerian universities, with the number of students graduating from Algerian universities reaching approximately 250 thousand university students annually.
The number of universities, adds the President of the Republic, has moved from 3 or 4 colleges only during the colonial days to more than 100 universities and university centers across the country and 14 national high schools for different people, especially two schools established last year, the National High School of Mathematics and the National High School of Artificial Intelligence, with 15 million teachers and students, representing 30 percent of Algeria’s population.
The President of the Republic pointed out that education in Algeria since independence has been and still is free at all levels, in order to allow all Algerian men and women to benefit from education.
