Thanks to a partnership with the committee Comitato Centenario Canonizzazione San Gabriele, the university will admit African students into its degree courses with a fee waiver, while the committee will look after their accommodation.

“The agreement signed today represents a first concrete step on the ‘Teramo Declaration’”

The agreement also includes internships and training for African students and students from the University of Teramo.

In the words of the university’s rector Dino Mastracola, this is the first concrete step since the signing of the ‘Teramo Declaration’ in June, during a conference attended by the rectors of 29 African universities, and will pave the way for further collaboration.

“The agreement signed today represents a first concrete step on the ‘Teramo Declaration’,” he said in a statement.

“It’s important to not only offer African students the possibility to attend our university’s degree courses, but also to undertake a process leading to the mutual recognition of joint degrees and offer our students the opportunity to carry out internships in African universities.”

The president of the Comitato Centenario Canonizzazione San Gabriele, Tommaso Navarra, underlined that the agreement also marks the creation of a student home for “deserving” foreign students in the city, which has the potential to attract more students to Teramo.

The Teramo Declaration was signed during the International Forum of the Gran Sasso in June in a  conference with African university rectors hosted by the University of Teramo.

The conference represented “an extraordinary event” for the university, Mastrocola said at the time, and he expressed the hope it would lead to the possibility of building shared educational pathways “to train professionals able to realise projects based on a new vision of reciprocal development”.