FAO Representative commends Ethiopia’s investment in thriving agricultural sector
Addis Ababa, February 5, 2025 (FMC) – The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Representative in Ethiopia and Sub-Regional Coordinator for Eastern Africa, Ms. Farayi Zimudzi, has commended Ethiopia for its significant investments in developing a thriving and productive agricultural sector.
In a recent exclusive interview with Fana Media Corporation, the FAO representative shared her thoughts on Ethiopia’s initiatives in the agriculture sector and FAO’s role and support to strengthen the country’s strides in ensuring food security.
Ms. Farayi also highlighted the architecture and the structures that have been put in place for food systems governance, involving a number of ministries and governmental bodies, wherein other stakeholders are also participating.
She believes that this sets the country on a good course towards a sustainable and resilient agri-food systems transformation. She also acknowledged the challenges of climate change, including droughts and floods which can impact the agriculture and related sectors.
The FAO representative stressed the need to making sure that access to affordable healthy diets is a realistic and achievable objective for all Ethiopians. In that regard, she said all partners should work together to achieve this objective. “So I think the key issue is on keeping the foot on the pedal and accelerating efforts, both at policy level and making sure that policies go beyond”
Ms. Farayi underlined the importance of keeping the momentum of success gained in the country’s agriculture sector. “It’s important to continue investing in agri-food systems transformation.”
Comparing Ethiopia’s ambitious initiatives in the agriculture sector with other African nations, the FAO representative recalled that Ethiopia’s recent success in wheat production has been cited as a good example at the AU Extraordinary Summit on the Post-Malabo Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) which was held recently in Kampala, Uganda.
According to Ms. Farayi, FAO has always been a strong partner for Ethiopia and the UN agency is looking to strengthen its partnership with the East African nation through four strategic priorities, such as production and productivity aspects, nutrition, natural resources management, and addressing climate-induced and/or man-made shocks.
“FAO has always been a strong partner for Ethiopia, working together from both at the policy front – supporting formulation of sound policies, implementation of those policies, and bringing to Ethiopia or exposing Ethiopia to global good practices in the agricultural space,” she noted.
Ms. Farayi said her organization will continue to strengthen this support to the country through the aforementioned strategic priorities. “Our program is tailored around those four pillars and we continue to work on that. In addition to that, there are cross-cutting issues that we support in the sector, such as supporting data gathering and managing data information for the sector.”
She also stated that empowering the youth and women is crucial to advance the agriculture sector and the national food system transformation.
Recalling huge the proportion of the youth in the Ethiopian population, the FAO representative noted the significance of bringing the youth into agri-food systems transformation by capacitating youth so that they can play a role throughout agri-food systems whether at the production end, at the processing part, or at other parts of the food systems.
By Mesafint Brlie