The University of the West Indies (The UWI) and the University of Havana (UH) have renewed a memorandum of understanding that will see the institutions deepening their relationship in several areas.

At the signing ceremony at Convention Palace in Havana on February 13, 2018, Prof Sir Hilary Beckles, vice chancellor, The UWI and Dr Gustavo Cobreiro Suarez, rector of UH, agreed to “strengthen transfer of knowledge in higher education through a professor mobility project, jointly with the Norman Girvan Chair on Caribbean Studies at the UH and a chair at the Cave Hill campus of The UWI”.

Vice Chancellor Beckles, who was in Cuba as a guest of Minister of Higher Education Dr José Ramon Saborido at the XI International Congress on Higher Education, also met with the Vice Minister of Culture, Dr Fernando Rojas and offered The UWI’s support for a Cuban-taught project in the performing arts with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

A previous MOU between the two universities, signed in February 2012, expired in February 2017. The new one, signed by Ambassador Gillian Bristol, director Latin American-Caribbean Centre in the office of the vice-chancellor at The UWI and Dr Ileana Sorolla Fernandez, director of international relations, UH.

It will remain in force for three years.

The assistance to be provided by each of the parties will include teaching, research, exchange of faculty and students and staff development.