President Kagame holds discussions with AGRA officials

President Kagame holds discussions with AGRA officials

The Head of State received the leaders on Thursday, August 8, 2024, in the village of Urugwiro, as Rwanda prepares to host the African Food Systems Forum (AFS), which will be held from Monday 2 to September 6, 2024 in Kigali.

AGRA President, Dr. Agnes Kalibata said that during the discussion with President Kagame, they highlighted to him the international conference organized by the association he heads (AGRA), which is held every two years in Rwanda and brings together different countries to work together to develop agriculture.

The conference, which will be held in Rwanda two years later, will examine themes such as innovation, speed of operation and change in the food industry, especially in this era of technology and climate change.

It is expected to bring together around 5,000 agricultural partners across the continent to take effective measures to improve Africa’s food sector.

President Kagame informed of upcoming food security conference in Rwanda

AGRA president Dr Agnes Kalibata said the conference found that despite the problems threatening people being related to climate change, much has been done to promote agriculture and livestock.

He said, “You can see progress everywhere, even in Rwanda, people were not protected from using fertilizers, the remaining few years the market was available and you can see that it was good for those who did that. The biggest problem we face is the problem of changing times, making everything we do “all the efforts sometimes backfire because people don’t know”.

He went on to say that the issue of climate change is not only a threat to Rwanda but also to many countries where people do not know when the rainfall will increase to help them prepare for agricultural work, or when it will decrease and lead to hunger.

“The number of hungry people, not just in Africa but around the world, has now increased so much that we are already at 730 million hungry people, even more than when we started implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. This is not because of inefficient agriculture,” he said.

Dr. Kalibata said that so far, we are working on agriculture, and although there is still a long way to go, we need to increase our efforts because agriculture is the economy of many countries on the African continent, so if more efforts are added, it will be very effective.