Bilateral Meeting with H.E. Jonathan Mueke, Principal Secretary of the State Department of Livestock of Kenya

Rome - The FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu, and H.E. Jonathan Mueke, Principal Secretary of the State Department of Livestock of Kenya met in Rome on the sidelines of the 2024 World food Forum to discuss ways to strengthen collaboration between FAO and Kenya. 

The Director-General welcomed the Principal Secretary and recognized the longstanding cooperation and partnership between FAO and Kenya. He reaffirmed FAO’s commitment to Kenya and the Africa region highlighting the nexus between peace and food focusing on the importance of stability in the region to avoid disruptions of food production and threats to food security. He emphasized the pivotal role of rural and smallholder farmers in policy making particularly on agriculture. He appreciated the efforts by Kenya to bring stability to ensure continuation of agrifood systems transformation.

The Principal Secretary thanked the Director-General for the welcome and congratulated him for the successful 2024 World Food Forum. He expressed appreciation for the FAO Hand in Hand Initiative (HiHi) platform noting it had provided the opportunity for Kenya and other countries to present their investment proposals, stating that Kenya had presented an investment proposal on post-harvest loss management, and commercialization of agriculture. He informed that the results were already beginning to show as Kenya had already been approached by several investors and negotiations have already begun.

The Principal Secretary further informed that 6.9 million farmers were registered and digitalized with the technical assistance of FAO and as a result fertilizer subsidies were disbursed and had in turn improved agricultural production in the country thus reducing maize imports significantly. He stated that the government is focused on livestock improvement to improve value chain, and requested technical assistance with breeding improvements, vaccination against disease for 22 million cattle, animal feed, digitalization of animals, to strengthen their livestock value chain on meat, leather and dairy products.

The Director-General acknowledged the vital role of the HiHi platform and encouraged Kenya to join the FAO Green Cities Initiative to design, improve and modernize their cities to integrate aquaculture, flowers and horticulture and to mitigate industrialization and the impacts of the climate crisis. He affirmed that FAO would continue to provide technical assistance with animal health, and advised Kenya to consider including commercialization of poultry for quick economic benefits for smallholder farmers.