Former Prime Minister of Ethiopia, H.E Hailemariam Desalegn, who is now the Board Chair of the Alliance for Green Revolution for Africa met with COMESA Secretary General Chileshe Kapwepwe, Saturday, July 16 in Lusaka, Zambia. Their talks focused on AGRA’s bid to become an agency of the African Union.

COMESA pledged to support and advocate for AGRA given the strong collaboration between the two organizations, with many joint programmes on enhancing food security, the latest being the development of a Regional Food Balance Sheet. They also discussed further areas of collaboration, especially on establishing agricultural value chains to ensure both small and bigger economies mutually benefit. They noted that the region and continent now has the opportunity to scale up food production given the current disruption on food supplies.