The Summit of Heads of State and Government CELAC-EU, scheduled for 17-18 July 2023, will provide an opportunity to generate a high-level strategic dialogue on the challenges and opportunities of bi-regional cooperation around (higher) education and science, technology and innovation in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and the countries of the European Union (EU). In the framework of its mission to facilitate the exchange between governmental authorities and civil societies of the two regions, the EU-LAC Foundation organised on 24 and 25 April 2023 a Knowledge Forum with the aim of generating inputs to enrich the agenda of discussions of high- level authorities in the field of cooperation in science, technology and innovation, the EU-CELAC Common Area of Higher Education, as well as capacity building and access, equity and quality of knowledge.
The EU-LAC Knowledge Forum was held at the Spanish Cooperation Training Centre in Montevideo, Uruguay in a hybrid form and had the technical and financial support of the Uruguayan Agency for International Cooperation (AUCI) and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), as well as the institutional support of the Ministry of Education and Culture of Uruguay and the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Forum brought together around 55 face-to-face participants and 50 virtual participants - mostly representatives of the student, academic and scientific communities, experts from international organisations specialised in the field, and government representatives from LAC and EU countries.
This report reflects, in synthesized form, the dialogues held during the Forum, as well as the information shared by several experts through an ex ante online survey.