Colombia and Ecuador to share innovation office in Israel

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Colombia and Ecuador agreed on Sunday, November 21, 2021 that they will share the innovation office that Colombia’s President Ivan Duque recently opened in Jerusalem, a purpose in which they will share expenses and space.

This was announced by Duque at a press conference in Quito with his Ecuadorian colleague Guillermo Lasso, who since coming to power in May has been seeking Israeli cooperation in this same field.

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“Recently, Colombia opened the innovation office where the Israel Innovation Authority remains in Jerusalem,” said Duque, after which he “celebrated” the “transcendental step” of having agreed that this office will be a “binational” one.

“That office will be binational. For now we are going to start by opening the spaces that we have consolidated to the presence of Ecuador, and improving the facilities to allow an active presence, and we will do that by sharing costs and operation,” he added.

This is the same commercial office, but with diplomatic representation, which Duque inaugurated in Jerusalem during his recent visit to Israel, and which generated a protest from the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).

On Sunday, in arguing for the decision to share it, he recalled that “Colombia and Ecuador share an agenda of entrepreneurship and innovation that embraces the fundamentals of the fourth industrial revolution” and that, in addition, “both Colombia and Ecuador have maintained a trade and investment relationship with the State of Israel.”

Therefore, he considered it “most important” that both nations promote an agenda of “innovation and entrepreneurship” and “each of the main aspects of the fourth industrial revolution”, where “the Internet of things, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, robotics and other disciplines such as integrated data analysis” stand out.

In his statements, Lasso did not refer to this issue, but it is one of the main ones that the new Ecuadorian ambassador, Helen Deller, who arrived in Israel this month and will present her credentials in December, carries in her portfolio.

Lasso spoke of his intention to expand this type of cooperation with Israel at a recent conference of Ecuador’s Alliance for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (AEI), where he also announced his intention to visit that country, possibly in January.

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