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Vice President Hamid Ansari will pay a five-day visit to North African countries of Morocco and Tunisia from May 30 to boost bilateral ties and explore new areas of cooperation.
Ansari will be in Morocco from May 30 to June 1 at the invitation of Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, the External Affairs Ministry said today, adding the two leaders would jointly launch the India-Morocco Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Rabat.
The visit to Morocco intends to further strengthen the cordial relations between the two countries, develop and diversify profile of bilateral economic cooperation and explore new avenues of co-operation and partnership on a wide range of issues of shared common interest, the MEA said.
The Vice President would hold discussions in Rabat with King Mohammed VI and Prime Minister Benkirane. Speakers of both Houses of Moroccan Parliament and the Minister of Foreign Affairs & Cooperation would call on Ansari, who would also visit the city of Marrakesh where he would be hosted by the Governor.
During the course of his visit, the Vice President would meet leading intellectuals and Imams of Morocco as well as deliver a talk at Mohammed V University in Rabat.
Members of Indian diaspora would interact with the Vice President in the Moroccan capital.
On the second leg of his two-nation tour, Ansari will be visiting Tunisia from June 2 to June 3, at the invitation of Prime Minister Habib Essid.
India has very cordial bilateral relations with Tunisia. "The economic cooperation between the two countries is deepening with Indian investments in phosphate sector," the MEA said.
During this visit, further avenues of cooperation in various areas of growth would be discussed.
The Vice President would be holding discussions in Tunis with Essid and President Beji Caid Essebsi on a wide range of issues of shared common interest.
He would be received by the President of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People of Tunisia where he would be meeting multi-party Members of Parliament and Tunisian-India Parliamentary Group.
Ansari would deliver a key note address to the Tunisian Diplomatic Corps and leading scholars and think tanks at the Tunisian Institute for Strategic Studies.
Besides his wife Salma Ansari, the Vice President would be accompanies by Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, four Members of Parliament and senior officials.
Stating that libraries continue to play a central role
in providing open and free access to information and ideas, the Vice President said explosion of information now being produced in digital format has dramatically changed expectations about the production as well as the use of knowledge.
"By providing equitable and affordable access to knowledge and information to larger numbers in society, they can allow a larger proportion of society to participate in the knowledge driven growth," he said.
"Social networks and social media have become more important in people's learning strategies. Changing paradigms of knowledge production, expanding sources and modes of dissemination, faster and broader accessibility to a growing range of information - also have the ring of opportunity," he said.
Libraries must transform and avail these opportunities to remain vital forces of knowledge dissemination in the years ahead, Ansari added.
"We are living in the information age and this implies that the main sector of economic productivity is changing from agriculture and manufacturing to creation and processing of information and knowledge", he said.
The Vice President also pointed out that in the present context libraries have the obligation to act as equalisers.
