The following is a guest post by Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister Hugo Swire.
Welcome to the British Embassy’s new Foreign Policy Blog – Speaker’s Corner! I am delighted to be the first of many to contribute to this new initiative.
I am greatly looking forward to returning to Brazil this week for my second visit. Following my appointment as Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in September last year, my very first overseas visit was accompanying the Prime Minister, David Cameron, to Brazil.
On that trip I was struck by the diverse number of links between our two countries, in commerce, research and great sporting partnerships to name a few.
This visit will touch again on many of these links but will have a particular focus on education. 2013 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Chevening Scholarship Programme, which awards outstanding scholars from around the world studying postgraduate courses at universities in the UK.
Over 1,400 Brazilian students have already benefited from this scheme and applications are now open for 2014/15.
As the FCO’s Ministerial Champion for Science & Innovation, I am particularly interested in the ‘Science without Borders’ initiative. This exciting Brazilian scholarship programme aims to send over 100,000 Brazilian students overseas to study at universities around the world by 2015. 10,000 of these students will be coming to the UK.
The UK has already hosted over 3,000 students under the programme to date and looks forward to seeing many more. But the relationship is not all one way, and we are increasingly seeing a number of British students coming out to Brazil to study as well.
It is initiatives such as these that bring the people of the UK and Brazil together and help us to learn more about one another. Ultimately that is what the relationship is all about, and I look forward to hearing more good news!