President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi presided over the annual meeting of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) held at the presidential palace in Cairo. The meeting comes at the end of Ismail Serageldin’s term as Director of the BA, and the appointment of its new Director, prominent Egyptian thinker Mostafa El-Feki. The meeting was attended by the BOT members which include the former presidents of Romania, Bulgaria, Ecuador, Albania, Latvia and Serbia , the former prime ministers of the Netherlands and Bosnia Herzegovina, as well as a number of ministers and eminent Egyptian and international thinkers and personalities
At the start of the meeting the President thanked Ismail Serageldin for his tireless and dynamic efforts during his directorship of the library and welcomed Mostafa El Feqi as the new director taking over the mission of innovation and spreading of culture and education in Egypt and the world.
In his address the Egyptian President spoke about extremist thought and stated that terrorism constitutes a peril to humanity. He stressed Egypt’s commitment to combatting terrorism on all levels, especially through spreading the culture of tolerance and pluralism and acceptance of the other.
The president praised the BA’s international projects and urged the expansion of relations with African institutions He also commended the BA project “Memory of the Arab world” which aims to be the largest digital repository of documents, photographs and documentaries on the history of the Arab world with the aim of preserving Arab heritage.
The members of the BoT expressed their profound appreciation of the president’s constant support of the library and his interest in expanding its role as a center of enlightenment and a cultural beacon in the confrontation of the terrorism and extremist thought that are affecting the whole world. The BoT praised Ismail Serageldin’s remarkable achievements during the past 15 years and welcomed Mostafa El-Feki to the position of Director of the Library.
