The second General Assembly of the Maghreb Conference of Heads of Higher Education Institutions (COMARES) will take place on Tuesday the 10th in Marrakech.

About forty presidents, rectors, and directors representing universities and major schools from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia will take part in this assembly, during which the participants will examine several subjects capable of contributing to the promotion of scientific and university cooperation within the Maghreb space.

During their discussions, the participants will also examine various avenues and projects that can highlight the vocation of this body, namely to promote scientific and university collaboration in the region, like the other regional conferences of the AUF, notes the same source.

Note that on the sidelines of this meeting, the organisers announce that a seminar on MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) will also be organised.

It should be specified that the Maghreb Conference of Heads of Higher Education Institutions was born on February 10th in Tunis. It was during a general assembly that brought together nearly forty university heads, including presidents, rectors, and directors.

The latter, from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, then voted on the statutes, elected the members of the bureau of this new body, and defined its ambitions. The main one being to mobilise the membership of the heads of AUF member institutions in the Maghreb space who intend to proceed with its university unification in the service of development through science and scientific research.

For Laassad El Asmi, the president of COMARES and rector of the University of Carthage in Tunisia, one of the main objectives of this body is to federate the existing skills in the Maghreb university space with a view to "putting in place a force of reflection capable of generating new ideas and contributing to the enrichment of university programmes in force in the different regions".

Very ambitious, COMARES also intends to "act on themes as sensitive as massification, the employability of young graduates, and entrepreneurship".

As a reminder, the first meeting of the COMARES Bureau took place on April 21st in Rabat. On this occasion, the main heads of this body and the participants exchanged at length to sketch out the COMARES action plan and the strategic lines of orientation. At the end of this meeting, "they notably agreed on the creation of a scientific prize and on the setting up of a hybrid master's degree with a Maghreb scope", can be read on the institution's website.