“Under the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, global food security is facing severe challenges. The number of people living in hunger has reached 811 million in 2020. Global food security cannot be maintained without collaboration between and among governments and organizations worldwide,” said Xiaojun Grace Wang, deputy director for Programme and Operations at the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), on November 26th.

A conference on agricultural science and technology south-south cooperation was held online on November 26th, 2021. It was co-hosted by the International Science and Technology Exchange Center of Hunan Province and UNOSSC. Experts and scholars from Hunan’s governmental departments, universities, research institutions, and foreign countries, including Albania, Nepal, and Ghana, participated and discussed challenges and opportunities in sustainable agricultural development.

“The Ghana government encourages people to plant rice. However, we have limitations in agricultural machinery. Therefore, we have conducted several south-south cooperation projects, including some with China,” said Richard Twumasi-Ankrah, a project coordination unit director of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture of the Republic of Ghana. He hoped to cooperate with China to improve rice planting efficiency and the capacity of the independent food supply of his country.

Zou Xuexiao, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and also president of Hunan Agricultural University (HUNAU), introduced that HUNAU had conducted many practical cooperation projects with south-south cooperation member countries, such as international rice planting training classes and the co-building of the Yuan Longping International High-level Agricultural Personnel Training Center. The university will enhance international production-education-research cooperation; improve the capacity of discipline, personnel, technical service, and south-south teamwork; and push south-south collaboration to be more valuable and industrialized.

Majlinda Bufi, mayor of Roskovec of Albania, mentioned that agriculture is crucial for Albania’s economy. “We have rather high requirements for agricultural product planting and rolled out policies to help increase farmers’ income and improve product quality. Therefore, we expect more south-south cooperation in the future,” she said.

Zhu Wan, deputy director of the Hunan Department of Science and Technology, hoped that Hunan and the participating countries would further broaden and deepen practical cooperation in agricultural science and technology, and jointly promote technological research and development and sci-tech outcome transformation. All with the hopes of providing solutions for the food security problems of developing countries.

Xiaojun Grace Wang said that, UNOSSC has been promoting south-south and third-party collaboration in agricultural and food security fields, based on its foundation, projects, think tanks, and UN’s professional knowledge. Therefore, this conference will effectively help fulfill the UN’s sustainable development schedule for 2030.

At the conference, UNOSSC announced the launching of the South-South Sustainable Agricultural Development City Clusters Initiative. The initiative aims to establish an interactive community for cities and organizations in developing countries to share knowledge and experience and discuss south-south and third-party cooperation.

This article is from Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Pang Yuehui

Chinese source: chinanews