Angola govt urges FAO to construct agribusiness centre

The government of Angola has requested technical support from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for the construction of the first Information Centre on Agribusiness, including the smart technologies diagnostic to mitigate the consequences of the country's drought.

Antonio Francisco de Assis, Angola’s Minister of Agriculture and Forests expressed the above in Rome while heading his country’s delegation that participated this month, in this city, in the 163^rd session of the FAO Council. The government of Angola also requested another support to strengthen the Agriculture Information System in the south African country.

Antonio Francisco de Assis took advantage of the occasion and invited the FAO Director-General Qu Dongyo to visit Angola, as well as reiterated the country's willingness to collaborate in the implementation of the United Nations programme. He thanked FAO for its support in providing technical assistance to rural development programmes implemented in Angola through the field schools methodology, whose first results have been encouraging, as they have raised the education and knowledge of the communities.

Among the many issues discussed during his meeting with Qu Dongyu, there is the issue of climate change, which has become a scourge that affects the food security of most African states, according to António Francisco de Assis.

He recalled that the cyclical drought in a part of southern Angola most severely affects food security and therefore “deserves to be tackled with a decentralized regional programme in the country”. The Angolan minister had hearings with his counterparts from Namibia, Apheus Naruseb, Cape Verde, Gilberto Silva de Carvalho, and Italy’s Teresa Bellanova.