Bilateral Meeting with H.E. Moses Vilakati, Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment of the African Union Commission (AUC)

Rome - The FAO Director General met with His Excellency Moses Vilakati, Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment of the African Union Commission (AUC) on the margins of the 44th Session of the FAO Ministerial Conference at FAO headquarters. 

The Director-General welcomed the Commissioner and congratulated him on his recent election. He noted AUC’s strategic relevance and important partnership to FAO stating food insecurity and malnutrition challenges facing the continent thus highlighting the need for significant improvement and robust development of agrifood systems transformation in Africa. He reaffirmed FAO's commitment to support the Commissioner for the successful implementation of his mandate. 

The Commissioner expressed his gratitude to the Director-General for the warm welcome and appreciated the strong, strategic, and pivotal role that FAO and the AUC play in agriculture development and ensuring food security on the African continent. He indicated that the AUC could benefit immensely from FAO’s support, in particular in the Post Malabo CAADP Agenda in its design, domestication and implementation at national level. He further highlighted the importance of ensuring domestication as this would speed up the impetus for attainment of food security and curbing malnutrition in the region.

Both agreed on the need to second experts and technical advisors to support the AUC on capacity building initiatives for soil health, seed health, food safety and fertilizer development with particular focus on reducing the use of chemical fertilizers.

Both affirmed that job creation remained a challenge particularly for the youth and women in the African continent and agreed to collaborate to strengthen the blue economy sector and fertilizer development and manufacturing working with private sector and experts from various developed countries to create jobs, improve food security, curb malnutrition and have better production.  

The Director-General reaffirmed FAO’s commitment to continue to support the AUC and looked forward to a team of cross-country and cross-regional aquaculture experts working together to develop a holistic design and master plan to improve the aquaculture sector in relevant African countries and across the Continent, for food security and for job opportunities, especially for women and youth.