Vietnam Supports Africa in Agriculture Development

African people mainly depend on natural conditions for agricultural development and they do not know how to use fertiliser. Only 4 per cent of agricultural land in Africa is irrigated. Meanwhile, according to experts, fertiliser will help increase grain output by 12 folds from 500 kg to six tonnes per hectare. Around 80-100 million farmers own agricultural land in the East African region and 25 million farmers live in the South African region, agriculture is considered as a useful solution to ensure food security in the East Asian region and the Horn of Africa regions.

 

Chairman of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Kanayo Nwanze confirmed that agriculture is a way to help Africa escape from poverty if countries focus on investments more and building partnership relationship with private sector.

 

Under the call of the United Nations and African Union (AU), African countries agree to boost the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) reached at AU’s summit at the capital of Mozambique to gain targets for ensuring food security of the whole continent in the next five years. To priority of African countries’ agricultural development is raising food productivity and output; developing processing industry; sharpening marketing capacity; developing human resources and mechanism capacity and expanding development and trade corridor. FAO said credit-based agricultural development project has been successfully implemented in Nigeria and can be developed to other African countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal. Experts from United Nations, AU and FAO urged African nations to concentrate on investments in agriculture which is a key sector providing jobs the most.

For Vietnam, despite lacking economic and financial conditions to beef up cooperation with African partners, Vietnam has shared many experiences in poverty reduction with African countries through cooperation programmes, especially in the agriculture sector. After cooperation dialogues, the two sides have inked many agricultural agreements.

 

Currently, a number of countries have proposed strengthening relationship with Vietnam by sending Vietnamese farmers to Africa for the implementation of rice production and wood processing programmes. Besides, Vietnamese experts also helped farmers in some African countries such as Mali and Mozambique; built models for technology transfer in the areas of irrigation, husbandry, cultivation, bee breeding, seafood, farm produce processing, engineering and document compiling. Agricultural production model such as intensive rice farming, expansion of shrimp breeding, pig breeding as well as processing technology application particularly rice production model piloted in Senegal. This has brought high efficiency helping farmers to increase value of vegetable and fruits.

 

FAO has worked with Vietnamese technicians to build a irrigation system for farmers, serving the demand of water storage and supply for households in daily life and cultivation activities. Vietnamese experts have also disseminated their experiences in many new sectors such as fresh water exploitation and French cross-bred chicken and bee breeding for African farmers. Vietnamese experts have instructed African farmers, using fish to make fish paste and some others products for export to Europe. In addition, Vietnam has assisted African nations to improve agricultural programmes as well as natural resource management policies through proper policies such as farming reform and water resource management technology.

 

From the foundations of the mentioned-above achievements, in the coming time, agriculture will be considered as a top priority in the Vietnam-Africa relationship, making great contribution to enhance the two-side friendship.