President Khatari Ahmudi Abdallahi | Established 2013 Founded 2013 | |
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Location Tifariti, Liberated territories, Western Sahara | ||
The University of Tifariti (Arabic:جامعة تيفاريتي), (Spanish: Universidad de Tifariti) is a university located in Tifariti, Western Sahara.
History
The University of Tifariti, the first Sahrawi university was established in 2013 (under Presidential Decree 24/2012 of 23 December 2012). President of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic Mohamed Abdelaziz also appointed Khatari Ahmudi Abdallahi as its first president.
The idea of building up a university in the Sahrawi liberated territories had been around at least since 2009, with the help of many other universities of the world, as the University of Leeds (United Kingdom), National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (Nicaragua), University of Berkeley (United States), University of Pretoria (South Africa), University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), University of Havana (Cuba), University of Mentouri (Algeria) and a dozen others from Africa, America and Europe.
Sahrawi authorities have offered free basic education to children in the Sahrawi refugee camps (passing from one of the lowest levels of literacy in Africa to over 90-percent literacy), but for higher education they had to travel abroad.