On January 17th, the independent online news website of South Africa published an article titled "China Africa Agricultural Cooperation: A Safety Net for Food Security and Food Sovereignty in Africa". The author is Felix Dapare Dacola, former president of the African Academy of Sciences and foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The full text is excerpted as follows:
China Africa cooperation has a history of several decades and has continued to flourish in areas such as economy, trade, politics, peace, and security.
However, recent initiatives between China and Africa have mainly focused on promoting technological innovation and coordinated development. In the field of education, more and more African students are choosing to receive undergraduate and graduate education in China instead of going to the UK and the US. For a long time in the past, Britain and the United States have dominated international education.
As the first step in helping Africa's still growing population of over one billion solve the problem of food, one of the focuses of China Africa education cooperation is to train agricultural technology and innovation skills. The issue of food is a major challenge facing the African Union.
To this end, the African Academy of Sciences has signed and implemented memorandums of understanding with multiple Chinese research institutions and universities, including the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the Chinese Academy of Forestry.
Therefore, the number of agricultural technology innovation cooperation projects between China and Africa continues to increase, with the aim of achieving food self-sufficiency, food sovereignty, and zero hunger in Africa.
