Rwanda to host 7th AASW, FARA Assembly

NaijaAgroNet:

The city of Kigali in Rwanda would host the7th Africa Agriculture Science Week (AASW) and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) General Assembly, from June 13- June 16 2016, NaijaAgroNet reports.

The event is the prime forum for stakeholders in African agriculture science, technology and innovation to take stock of their collective achievements over the past three years and chart a common agenda along with modalities for achieving their collective targets over the next three years.
With the theme “Apply Science, Impact Livelihoods,” the event would feature activities such as plenary sessions, an exhibition, the Rwanda day, to showcase its achievements in agricultural research and innovation and a business session.

The Executive Director of FARA, DrYemiAkinbamijo, while briefing journalists in Accra, said that the content of the programme would be organised around five sub-themes: institutional systems and policies for making science work for African agriculture, sustainable productivity growth, value chains and profitable agribusinesses.

DrAkinbamijo explained that FARA is the apex continental organisation responsible for coordinating and advocating agricultural research for development and also serves as the technical arm of the Africa Union Commission on matters concerning agriculture science, technology and innovation. While speaking on the need to embrace technology in order to advance the sector, he added that African countries agriculture production is low because, it depends on old system of farming.

Co-organisers of the event alongside FARA, are: sub-regional Agricultural Research Organisations, African Union Commission and NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency, Education Networks, The Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation and the Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture.

Okoli Vincent/GEE
 

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Africa must innovate to open up agriculture potentials – FARA

NaijaAgroNet

The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) and the German government ended a two-day forum in Nairobi by declaring that the continent must embrace agricultural innovations to become globally competitive in bio-economy, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Agriculture Felix Koskei, told participants that one of the key ingredients to growth in the agriculture sector is attributable to development of technology that fails to be aligned to the needs of the client and effectively fails to compliment national and institutional goals’ aspirations.

NaijaAgroNet reports that particularly, Koskei noted that innovations should be self-perpetuated or be taken up by commercial entities and business the innovations are expected to yield immense socioeconomic benefits and impact productivity income and sustainability of the environment for the small holders.

“Despite this huge resources and potential, this continent together with other developing countries are host to 852 million hungry residents who require constant support,” Koskei noted.

According to Rhoda Tumusiime, Commissioner for Agriculture at the Africa Union, “Africa must feed itself and in fact this initiative of scaling up innovation is very critical. One world no hunger Africa should have no hunger because we have the capability, the land the people but as you have also heard only 50 per cent of agriculture productivity is contributed to by innovation.”

The executive director, FARA, Yemi Akinbamijo,lamented that “Money is not everything; by the way because we have spent more than 150 billion US dollars, about N29,925 trillion, in the last three decades and we are still where we are and we are spending 50 billion US dollars to borrow foods.”

Cyriacus Nnaji/ GEE

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