China Commits $30M To FAO Millennium Goals
30 March 2009 In an agreement signed last week, China has agreed to make available a $30 million trust fund to the UN’s Foreign Agriculture Service (FAO) to support developing countries in improving their agricultural productivity to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, FAO reports. The fund will last for three years with China releasing $10 million a year.
Under the agreement, China will provide experts to developing countries for technical assistance and training as well as agricultural inputs and small equipment. While focused on Africa, the FAO-China trust fund will not exclude other regions.
While the establishment of the fund marks China’s entry into FAO’s donor community, China has provided technical cooperation through FAO in Africa for many years. In 2005 China formalized a new Strategic Alliance with FAO for south-south cooperation, in which developing countries help each other through transfer of knowledge, personnel, and technologies, carried out under the umbrellas of FAO’s National and Regional Programs for Food Security. The Alliance envisages the provision of up to 3,000 Chinese experts and technicians to developing countries.
Between 2003 and 2007, five hundred experts and technicians from China were fielded to Nigeria, greatly contributing in the implementation of that country’s National Program for Food Security. Since the inception of the south-south cooperation program in FAO, over 700 Chinese experts have been fielded to all regions of the world, including the Caribbean and the Pacific.
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