Speaking at the signing ceremony of a grant agreement between the National Museum Foundation (FNM) and the French Development Agency (AFD), Le Drian said that this partnership with the Kingdom will help define and implement a pan-African program for capacity building and sharing experiences in the area of museums and heritage.

The French FM also highlighted the fundamental role of the FNM, which is asserting itself as a regional crossroads of expertise and know-how for the conservation and preservation of heritage, by hosting experts from Africa and France.

Le Drian congratulated the FNM and AFD teams for having developed this program which expresses the strong, diverse and long-standing cultural ties uniting the two countries and welcomed the quality of dialogue between the two cooperation departments that is proportionate to this "exceptional partnership."

"In these times of crises, health crisis and crisis linked to terrorism and extremism, it is very important to fight against the temptation of withdrawing into oneself," the French official added.

The Euro 300,000 grant agreement, signed Monday in Rabat, aims to implement a program of capacity building and exchange of experiences within the framework of pan-African cooperation.

It provides for mobilizing a group of experts from French-speaking West African countries and France in order to exchange good practices and structure a network of African experts in museum and heritage professions.