Remarks by President Evariste Ndayishimiye of the Republic of Burundi at the International Forum on Hybrid Rice Assistance and Global Food Security

Remarks by President Evariste Ndayishimiye of the Republic of Burundi at the International Forum on Hybrid Rice Assistance and Global Food Security

Your Excellences,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends, 

The world is undergoing dramatic changes in many ways. This requires the international community to adopt necessary measures to effectively tackle challenges brought by such changes, e.g. climate change, wars, terrorism, and in particular the profound COVID-19 impact unseen in human history.

All of these will lead us to an unprecedented situation that requires our concerted effort to solidify a community with a shared future for humankind.

The People's Republic of China took the initiative to launch discussions on the fundamental issue of food security, to which we pay great tribute.

As a Chinese saying goes, "It is more helpful to teach people how to fish than to just give them fish." China did both.

Thanks to the technical support from Chinese experts, Burundi has benefited a lot from the China Aid Agricultural Demonstration Center in Kihanga county. The center has been actively supporting the Institute of Agricultural Sciences of Burundi (ISABU) for research on agricultural development, especially on rice planting.

We've earned a great success in hybrid rice planting, which will significantly increase rice yields in Burundi.

This achievement fits in well with our development plan based on the principle of "everybody has access to food and each household has savings."

Currently, we are committed to fully implementing this principle, and our development plan is just right for the times. With a young demography, the Burundian people are full of vitality and diligence. Under the right leadership, the general public collaborates with each other through agricultural cooperatives and associations.

We believe that other cooperation partners will follow suit to help us for more successes.

In this regard, we thank the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Bank for their agricultural support. We also expect the EU to implement its Food and Agriculture Resilience Mission (FARM) initiative for African countries.

In the meantime, we hope this forum generate helpful suggestions to realize genuine "global food security via hybrid rice assistance."

Last but not least, we also hope relevant conferences to accommodate all dimensions of agriculture to a wider level in the long run, including other areas that aim to facilitate our countries, in particular the economic development of countries in the Global South.

Thank you!