Bilateral Meeting with H.E. Miyazaki Katsura, Executive Senior Vice President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)

Baku, Azerbaijan - FAO Director-General QU Dongyu met with H.E. Miyazaki Katsura, Executive Senior Vice President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) on the sidelines of COP29.

The Director-General conveyed is appreciation to the Executive Senior Vice President for efforts to strengthen cooperation on issues of mutual interest, particularly in Africa and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

The Executive Senior Vice President highlighted the importance of increasing work on agriculture and climate change projects to ensure sustainability through policy making. She expressed JICA’s willingness to strengthen collaboration with FAO on Rice Development Projects in Africa citing Sierra Leone as one of the countries that JICA is working with, explaining that the aim of the project was to increase rice production in Africa.

She further conveyed JICA’s wish to improve collaboration on irrigation projects for small farmers in Africa through the Green Climate Fund (GCF), and the Director General reiterated his support for these projects as implementing organization for GCF.

The Director-General affirmed FAO’s commitment to cooperate with JICA on Rice Development Projects in Africa and stated that this could be done through South-South Cooperation.

He further stated that technical assistance would be provided in the form capacity building and by providing training to small-scale farmers. He also stated that FAO and JICA could also design projects together for Rice Development Projects in different countries, including SIDS, including through strengthening work on the monitoring of emissions in rice production.