Seventeenth Annual BA Board of Trustees Meeting
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President Abdelfattah Al-Sisi presided at the opening session of the seventeenth annual BA Board of Trustees meeting, which was held on Saturday, 9 April 2016. The Board consists of several international figures, including the former Presidents of Finland, Romania, Bulgaria, Ecuador, Albania, Columbia, Latvia, and Benin; the former Prime Ministers of Norway and Bosnia and Herzegovina; in addition to a number of distinguished Egyptian and foreign scientists and intellectuals.
The role of the BA as a center of enlightenment in the intellectual fight against violence and extremism, through developing religious discourse and emphasizing national identity, was commended. The BA was able to achieve this goal through its partnership with Al-Azhar, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Arab League, and through its openness to and connections with several centers of enlightenment in the Arab world and various foreign academic centers.
The meeting also emphasized the necessity of continuing the programs adopted by the BA, including the Paperless Organization Program that aims to digitize the entire BA administrative system. The BA will thus become the first Egyptian organization to implement that strategy. Furthermore, the BA will continue its efforts in documenting Arab and Egyptian history and heritage by electronically archiving the Dar Al Mahfouzat documents, enriching the Eternal Egypt and Memory of Modern Egypt websites, launching the Memory of the Arab World project, and finally launching the Science City project for the dissemination of scientific culture among youths.
During the meeting, the achievements of the BA of the past year (2015–2016) were presented, with special focus on its international projects. Recently, the BA has launched its African Networks in order to directly communicate with half a million individuals in Africa and the Arab world. The BA also expanded its work locally by executing most of the Embassies of Knowledge project, which connects Egyptian universities to the BA and its services, especially the international Distance Learning programs that has been recently provided by the BA to Arab and Egyptian researchers. The attendees also highlighted future BA programs, such as the Leadership Education and Institute of Advanced Studies Project (LEAR).