Cuban professor: “The Belgians fell in love with Cuba 25 years ago”

SANTA CLARA, Cuba, Feb 14 (ACN) The Marta Abreu University of Las Villas (UCLV) awarded Professor Edilbert Van Driessche, from the Free University of Brussels (VUB), the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa of Agricultural Sciences as part of the celebrations for 25 years of cooperation between the two universities.

Eduardo Cruz Muñoz, leader of the first project signed between Cuban and Flemish universities, said that the Belgians fell in love with Cuba, the UCLV and the Revolution since the 1990s, which paved the way for the infrastructural and scientific growth that the Cuban school boasts nowadays, as their alliance made Internet connection possible for the first time and provided state-of-the-art tools and materials to develop biotechnological education and the training of young talents.

For 10 years, VUB and UCLV developed the VLIR program—made of projects that had a major impact on agricultural, computational, pharmaceutical, environmental and other sciences—which made room for a currently active nationwide network of exchanges involving five Cuban and all Flemish universities. These relations have also included the development of human resources through joint training, master’s degree and doctoral courses for Cuban professionals in Belgium.