Ambassador of Brazil to Kenya pays courtesy call to UoN VC

On April 6, 2022, His Excellency Silvio Albuquerque, the Ambassador of Brazil to Kenya, made a courtesy visit to the University of Nairobi (UoN) Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen Kiama. On his first visit to the University, the ambassador noted that he has represented Brazil in Kenya since September 2021.

The ambassador asserted that “Brazil is on course to improving bilateral relations with Kenya: especially in the education sector, specifically with the University of Nairobi”. The main area of discourse was in scholarship programmes for students who want to take their post graduate degrees, masters degree or PhD in Brazil public universities. “We could try and concentrate the cooperation in the Universities located in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília [the capital] and Salvador de Bahia” he noted.

In his words the Ambassador remarked “We’ll be opening up more possibilities to allow the scholarship programmes for the students by improving the flexibility of these programmes by having dual-degrees and breaking the Portuguese language barrier”. The ambassador of Brazil remarked that for sustainable economic development, the country had created public institutions for higher learning in STEM courses  such as the Technical Institute of Aeronautics which produces the best aeronautical engineers in the world - most of them end up working in Embraer. This has made headwinds for Brazil to become the biggest aircraft manufacturer in the Southern hemisphere.

“We can start working on short visits for linkages with the University of São Paulo and create these programs” the VC noted.

The Ambassador also lauded the excellent work being done in the Department of Linguistics - which offers a Portuguese language programme. With a light touch, the Brazilian Ambassador said that the Brazilian Portuguese is beautiful and sweeter than the Portugal-Portuguese: because it has the mixture of Portuguese brought from Portugal as well as languages brought from Africa.