Firmin Edouard Matoko, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Priority Africa, on Tuesday highlighted Cuba's commitment to collaboration and brotherhood actions with African people for more than five decades.

Upon celebrating Africa Day on Tuesday, the senior UN official also praised the deep ties of friendship and solidarity that unite Cuba with Africa, a continent that, he said, 'is deeply rooted in the Cuban identity.'

The assistant director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) stressed that when the world currently demands greater cooperation and multilateralism, 'we want to remember' those Cuban medical brigades that played a decisive role in the public health of the entire African continent.

Matoko praised Cuba's broad cultural program on the occasion of Africa Day, in which the deep historical and cultural ties that unite this Caribbean nation and that continent, and the varied expressions of the beautiful heritage they share, are appreciated, he said. 

In his on-line speech, Matoko, who is also a UNESCO assistant director for External Relations, recalled the founding on May 25, 1963, of the Organization for African Unity and, since 2001, it assumed the name of Union African.

The UNESCO official said that Africa is a priority for that agency, from where it works to support that continent in favor of peace and sustainable development.