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Wednesday 05 December 2007-Eleven African Countries Join Forces for Rural Education

Eleven African countries, meeting at the Headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, have agreed to join forces to meet the challenge of providing education for rural communities.

Representatives of Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Niger, Uganda, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania adopted a series of recommendations to improve coordination between various institutions and departments and international agencies.

Senior Agriculture Education Officer at the Food and Agriculture Organization, Lavina Gasperini says education for rural people is important for meeting the millennium development goals:

"And especially, the goal of halving poverty and hunger for which FAO is the lead agency and also millennium goal two,universal primary education. You cannot achieve universal primary education if you don't reach rural people because they are the majority of the one who are still out of school."

Ms. Gasperini says that the meeting in Rome is a follow-up to a meeting held in Addis Ababa two years ago.