FAO Director-General and IFPRI counterpart renew Memorandum of Understanding

9 December 2019, Rome - FAO Director-General QU Dongyu met today with Shenggen Fan, Director-General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) for talks that focused on the partnership between the two organizations.The meeting provided an opportunity for FAO and IFPRI to renew a Memorandum of Understanding with the objective to further strengthen the areas of common collaboration and include new areas and initiatives towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

In particular, the parties agreed to work more closely together on policy assistance and dialogue, data and analysis, food systems and nutrition, and to collaborate on FAO’s new Hand-in-Hand initiative, which prioritizes targeted work that benefits people in the world’s most vulnerable regions, in a series of countries.

The FAO Director-General applauded Mr.Shenggen Fan for his services as IFPRI Director-General and wished him well in his future endeavours, as he will step down at the end of December 2019 to be replaced by Jo Swinnen, who will start his mandate in January 2020.