News

Accra, 28 August 2017 – FAO and Ghana have created a knowledge exchange platform (KEP) for reducing rural poverty to share the national knowledge on rural poverty reduction (programmes and initiatives) with neighbouring countries through South-South Cooperation (SSC) schemes.  Ghana has recently made great progress in reducing rural poverty and looks forward to share some of their successful experiences that could benefit neighbour countries facing similar challenges as those they have recently overcome.  “Solutions that work best in one southern country are of greater possibility of working well in another,” said Dr Abebe Haile Gabriel, Deputy Regional Representative for Africa and FAO...

FAO and UNICEF are strengthening their partnership to promote the expansion of social protection as one pathway out of poverty. A new joint study refutes some of the misperceptions and criticisms around cash transfers in the context of sub-Saharan Africa, the region currently home for three quarters of world’s extreme-poor. These myths include: “cash is wasted on alcohol and tobacco”, “transfers are just hand-outs”, “cash creates dependency”, “transfers lead to negative economic...

A new FAO project targets Syrian refugees and host communities in Turkey, for development of vocational skills in the agriculture sector. The aim is to provide employment opportunities for some 900 people in five provinces of Southern Turkey: Adana, Gaziantep, Isparta, Mersin and Sanliurfa. With a budget of US$ 1.7 million, the project is financed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), with Turkey’s Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock as lead executing partner and FAO as implementing agency.

The Government of Libya has signed a USD 3.5 million agreement with FAO to strengthen its technical and functional national capacities in agriculture. The project aims to build capacities and to ensure more efficient and effective governmental agricultural support services to achieve greater synergies and impacts. After hydrocarbons, agriculture is the second most important sector in Libya’s economy. However, the socio-economic and environmental settings in which the agricultural sector operates present a number of challenges, such as low productivity and climate conditions, characterized by little and fluctuating rainfall, limited water resources and poor irrigation systems. “Libya has recognized the fundamental role of...