Centro de inversiones de la FAO

End of the year event: FAO Investment reflects on 2020

11/02/2021

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Investment Centre hosted the virtual End Of the Year Event at the close of 2020. This event replaced the annual knowledge sharing event, Investment Days

While the Investment Days events usually gather participants from a variety of organizations, institutions and public and private sectors to share technical knowledge to strengthen strategic investments, EOYE was carried out with a more internal focus.

The virtual event took place from the 14th to 17th ofDecember with 140 Investment Centre staff who participated as both as attendees but also speakers and moderators in several technical sessions. Staff wellbeing activities were hosted between the sessions to foster team building and knowledge sharing.

On the opening day of the event FAO Director General Qu Dongyu and Chief Economist Maximo Torrero participated as speakers, offering welcome remarks.

The DG offered encouragement to Investment Centre management, to work together across different divisions of planning, production and science to develop more relevant and sustainable strategies for regional and country development.

The Chief Economist remarked, “We have to make a big change globally and that’s where the Investment Centre can play a substantial role”.

Highlights of the Centre’s work in 2020 included updates on a new EU-FAO-Cirad, Food Systems Assessments; initiatives such as AgrIntel; Agrivest and RuralInvest; Digital Agriculture, project design for Green Climate Funding and project support farmers organizations and social capital such FAO-GAFSP in Bangladesh. 

The Centre’s Director Mohamed Manssouri in his concluding remarks gave his heartfelt thanks to the Investment Centre ‘family’ for their tremendous commitment and hard work during these exceptionally challenging times.

The Centre is already looking ahead to a very busy year of supporting and raising the profile of investments. Follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest news, events and publications surrounding sustainable and inclusive investments in agriculture. 

Read more about the Investment Centre’s support to sustainable food-systems.