AU SAFGRAD to attend in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Inaugural Conference of the AU Specialized Technical Committee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment, (5-9th October 2015)
A strong team comprised of Dr Ahmed ELMEKASS, Coordinator; Mr. Mamadou KOUTOU, Programme Officer; Dr. Agbonlahor MURE, Production and Marketing Officer, will represent AU SAFGRAD at Inaugural Conference of the AU Specialized Technical Committee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment. The gathering will take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 5th to 9th October 20015.
The overall objective of the Conference is to review relevant strategic goals, facilitate mutual accountability and Identify synergies, linkages and complementarities in on-going agriculture, rural development, water and environment related initiatives. Further the meeting will review the respective sector activities and their implications on the achievement of the overarching goals of the Africa Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation (3AGT) agenda for attaining food and nutrition security, reduce poverty, boost intra-African trade, and enhance resilience of production systems and livelihoods to Climate Change and related shocks.
More specifically, the Inaugural Conference of the AU Specialized Technical Committee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment aims to attain the following objectives:
a. To review and adopt the Rules of Procedure of the Specialized Technical Committee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment;
b. To facilitate broad-based consultation and dialogue among all relevant stakeholders on mutual accountability, mutual learning and biennial reporting on previous commitments;
c. Consideration of various strategic documents related to Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment;
d. To identify synergies, linkages and complementarities in on-going agriculture, rural development, water and environment initiatives and agree on areas of follow up actions at various levels; and
e. To examine and internalize the strategic and operational modalities for coordination mechanisms between the relevant sector ministries at Member State level, which are also linked to those at REC level.
The African Union Assembly of Heads of State and Government adopted the configuration of the Specialised Technical Committees (STCs) and the modalities of their operationalization (Assembly/AU/Dec.227 (XII) and Decision Assembly/ AU/Dec.365 (XVII) in January 2009 and July 2011, respectively as Organs of the Union in accordance with Article 5 (1) (g) of the Constitutive Act. One of the Specialized Technical Committees recommended for establishment is the Specialized Technical Committee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment.
