Macky Sall receives FAO Director-General

A / Dakar / Alioune Ndiaye

Senegalese President Macky Sall received the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Qu Dongyu, today, Sunday, at the Palace of the Republic, by Senegalese President Macky Sall.

The bilateral meeting was devoted to cooperation between FAO and Senegal and between the organization and the African Union, which Sall currently chairs.

“They discussed common aspirations to leverage science, innovation, information, communication and technology and partnerships to transform Senegal’s agricultural sector, to improve nutrition and livelihoods,” said the statement issued by the FAO office in Senegal.

Dongyu and Sall, according to the paper, discussed the need to improve access to nutritious foods in Africa, where nearly one billion people currently cannot afford nutritious food.

“Better nutrition is one of the four best strategic frameworks of FAO 2022-2031, along with better production, a better environment and a better life for all, and leaving no one behind,” the statement stressed.

At the same time, the African Union declared 2022 the year of building nutritional resilience on the African continent: accelerating the development of human, social and human capital.

The two leaders agreed that transforming agri-food systems is an urgent priority to boost nutrition in Africa, improve production and increase resilience, according to the same source.

The statement said that this is the first visit of its kind by Qu Dongyu to Africa since he assumed the presidency of the FAO in August 2019.

The Director-General of FAO arrived in Senegal for a short visit after attending the 32nd Session of the Organization’s Regional Conference for Africa in Equatorial Guinea (11-14 April).

On the occasion of his meeting with the President of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, on the sidelines of the conference, the FAO Secretary-General stressed the importance of youth empowerment and the need to address it through innovation and digitization of agri-food. Systems, the United Nations Foundation website reported.

“The two leaders spoke about the need to transform Africa’s agri-food system to be more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable,” she added.

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