Agrifood: Quadripartite welcome political commitment against antimicrobials - NaijaAgroNet

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The Third Global High-Level Ministerial Conference on Antimicrobial Resistance, hosted in Muscat, Oman, concluded last weekend, where targets to address the global antimicrobial resistance (AMR) challenge were discussed for the first time. 

The conference and its numerical targets for antimicrobial use in the human and animal sectors will pave the way for bold political commitments at the forthcoming UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on AMR in 2024.

2019: Make family planning political agenda - Salami

NaijaAgroNet: 

The Associate Director, Pathfinder International Nigeria, Dr. Habeeb Salami has tasked the Nigerian media to make family planning a political agenda for the forthcoming general elections in 2019, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Welcoming participants to a three-day Pathfinder’s AFP SMART Advocacy Workshop in Lagos recently urged media practitioners especially in the health sector to ensure that family planning attains agenda status in the next year elections.

“We should let health issues be among campaignable issues as election time is around the corner against 2019,” he charged.

Dr. Salami who lead the Pathfinder’s team on behalf of the Country Director, explained the importance of the workshop for media practitioners, saying its to form a formidable media group that will do a focused-advocacy on family planning.

According to him the overall aim is to achieve an increase in the uptake in Contraceptive Prevalent Rate (CPR) rate by 74 per cent in two-year time, that is, by 2020.

Opportunities, he said, are abound in the media to get policy makers to do the needful, stressing that the current state of “our health indices are too bad for us as a country.”

He also said that there have been calls on why another group is being created because there are other advocacy groups, insisted that “Pathfinder wanted a very focused and evidence-based advocacy.”

The workshop moderated by the Communications Officer at Pathfinder International, Mrs. Somto Atuanya, alongside, Mrs Yemisi and Mrs Edirin Aderemi, while other speakers at the event included Dr. Sidiat Okaga, Dr. Folashade Oludare and Mr. Ayo Adebusoye among others.

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Political will needed to fight against hunger

NaijaAgroNet:

The Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has declared that the fight against hunger is essentially a political issue, reports NaijaAgroNet.

"Italy maintains that the fight for food security is, at this point in history, a question of politics with a capital ‘P'," he said while speaking at a session  in Rome to mark the 2016 World Food Day.

He also said, that the international community needs to urgently address the problems of inequality and injustice.

“Italy would strive to ensure that these themes are at the top of the international agenda, including at two important events in March next year: the G7 summit, which Italy will host and preside and a meeting of European Union leaders,

Renzi noted that Europe should reject a "culture of waste". Italy recently passed a new law aimed at curbing food waste, one that was based, "more on collaboration and less on punishment".

Another keynote speaker at the ceremony, Princess Lalla Hasnaa of Morocco, whose country is hosting next month's COP22 climate talks, said these would be "action-oriented" and geared towards implementing the Paris Agreement.

"The Moroccan Presidency will seek to nurture and promote the spirit of mobilization which prevailed in Paris in terms of increasing climate funding, developing expertise and ensuring the transfer of technology. It will lay special emphasis on adaptation, primarily for the countries of the South and for Small Island States." Princess Hasnaa said.

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Modern ideas key for improved jobs and income

 NaijaAgroNet

Innovation, modern ideas have been identified as the only key to engender improved jobs and sustainable income as joblessness among young people is one of the most pressing social, economic and political challenges facing Africa in the 21st Century, NaijaAgroNet  reports.

African Development Bank's Special Envoy on Gender, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi stated this in Abidjan at a consultative workshop organised by the Bank's Agriculture and Agro-Industry Department in collaboration with the Office of the Special Envoy on Gender and the Human Development Department.

The workshop NaijaAgroNet gathered, was designed to deliberate on a proposed innovative programme titled “Empowering Novel Agri-Business-Led Employment for Youth in African Agriculture (ENABLE Youth)”.  The programme once developed, will be implemented in 20 Regional Member Countries of the Bank under the coordination of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).

The programme will be designed to reinforce the roles of disenfranchised young African adults through a comprehensive outreach approach involving providing information, life-skills education (effective and functional job training), proven technologies and opportunities to at least 800,000 youth in 20 RMCs.

“Over 10 million young people in Africa are entering the job market each year. Despite the strong growth performance of African economies over the recent years, the continent has failed to create the number of jobs needed to absorb these young people,” said Fraser-Moleketi.

NaijaAgroNet reliably learnt that the meeting was attended by key players in the agricultural sector such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), and West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development

Cyriacus Nnaji/ ED,OPs

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