At the Closing Ceremony of the African Green Revolution Forum Summit, on 09 September 2022 in Kigali, Republic of Rwanda, His Excellency Mr. Yerlan Baidaulet, Director General of the Islamic Organization for Food Security (IOFS), was among like-minded distinguished food security apologists and practitioners to share views at the Plenary Session on “Stronger Together – Reinforcing Global Cooperation for Food Systems”.
In his address, the Director General emphasized the IOFS “African commitment” as unquestionable, particularly for the fact that 2022 is being celebrated as the “IOFS Year of Africa” to ensure that the Organization would focus its main attention to that continent by developing and implementing relevant projects with the support of Member States and other stakeholders, including international organizations. He then stressed that the togetherness in addressing the challenges of food insecurity in Africa could be seen within the five pillars of the IOFS 2031 Strategic Vision as follows:
- Governance Enablement.
- Food Crisis Response.
- Capacity building.
- Industry development.
- Resource Mobilization.
Finally, he mentioned that the IOFS was ready to welcome result-oriented partnerships within the aforementioned pillars so as to ensure that Member States are the beneficiaries of the global cooperation on food systems.
On the sidelines of the event, the Director General, assisted by Dr. Ismail Abdelhamid, Director of Program & Projects Office, and Mr. Abdula Manafi Mutualo, Senior Liaison Officer, met with leadership of OneAgrix, the world’s first B2B e-commerce marketplace for agricultural and halal food. Ms. Diana Sabrain, CEO/Co-Founder, Mr. Kevin Dean, Chief Technology Officer, and Mr. Ziyaad Davids, Director for Africa, shared their views on how OneAgrix digital platform could be an important IOFS partner in integrating sustainability into an end-to-end supply chain, seamlessly connecting buyers and suppliers in a singular customer journey and creating one ecosystem that serves the world’s Muslims as well as health-conscious consumers. The consultations are to continue towards agreeing the best mechanism for a sustainable IOFS-OneAgrix cooperation in near future.
Another sideline meeting was with Dr. Claudia Sadoff, Executive Managing Director of CGIAR System Organization, to explore avenues of cooperation on matters of mutual interest and common areas of intervention in the respective strategic frameworks of both Organizations.
