Staff Reporter
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has urged for multi-pronged stakeholder participation to enhance national food security.
President Mnangagwa gave a keynote address at the ninth panel discussion on the theme ‘safeguarding food security through multilateralism, trade and national action at the Forum on Financing for Development.
In his speech, President Mnangagwa emphasised that national food security can be attained through enhanced stakeholder participation amongst nations.
“Zimbabwe’s development experience has been recently characterised by the illegal sanctions and further curtailed by climate change, COVID-19 and global geo-political tensions. In spite of this, our Government led agricultural transformation policies have shown that national food security can be attained through multi-prolonged stakeholder participation and profitability.
“As a country, we recognise that there are common goals at the multilateral level around food security and nutrition as well as peace and security, climate change environment,” said President Mnangagwa.
Additionally, President Mnangagwa highlighted a greater need for partnerships and he further urged institutions that oversee the global multilateral system to reform and restore people’s confidence in the system and multilateralism in general, while ensuring that all people have access to nutritious food.
“In this regard, strategies to strengthen multilateralism and trade must be scaled up to guarantee food security and sovereignty across countries taking into account the different levels of development. Institutions that oversee the global multilateral system are called upon to urgently reform and restore our confidence in multilateralism and the world trade system to ensure that all people have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food,” said President Mnangagwa.
Meanwhile, President Mnangagwa, has launched the Agriculture and Food Systems Transformation Strategy which seeks to achieve a US $8,2 billion agriculture economy by 2025. He said his administration was committed to ending hunger and poverty in line with the aspiration of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and the 2014 African Union Malabo Declaration.
