Towards the 2021 UN Summit on Food Systems and an enhanced Africa-Europe partnership on sustainable agriculture

The “Africa Europe Days”, organized by Friends of Europe and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation together with a consortium of partners, presented a programme of virtual dialogues from 2-9 December. On the second day of the event, FAO Deputy Regional Representative of the Regional Office for Africa, Jocelyn Brown Hall, took part in a session on the UN Food Systems Summit where she explained the essential role of a One Health approach to prevent zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19 in the future.

“Animal diseases cause up to an estimated 70% of human diseases. If we miss this opportunity to address animal health and production systems, what would we have learned from this pandemic? FAO strongly supports a One Health Approach as a holistic solution covering the different aspects of agriculture, which will also be a central theme at the upcoming UN Food System Summit,” Brown Hall noted.

COVID-19 came to add on a long list of challenges for Africa: climate change, conflict, economic downturn, all of which underline the need for strengthening the Europe-Africa trade and FAO's strong commitment to engage with youth in Africa. “Youth is at the top of FAO’s agenda, from the Director-General, to our decentralized offices and our colleagues in Rome. It is a cross-cutting effort,” she said.

The event comes one week after the FAO Brussels Dialogue on “Opportunities for Recovery: Creating jobs for young people in Africa”. More information on the dialogue is available here.

The recording of the event is available here.