From April 27th to May 7th, an Italian Cooperation system mission travels in West Africa, more precisely in the Republic of Guinea, Ghana, Senegal and Ivory Coast.
Alongside the head of delegation Stefano Gatti, General Director for Development Cooperation of the MAECI, the Director of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, Marco Riccardo Rusconi participates in a series of meetings aimed at deepening and enhancing the interventions underway in Countries in the area.
During the stay in the Republic of Guinea, the program includes a meeting with representatives of civil society active in the area (LVIA, CISV, Comunità Sant’Egidio, APDAM), a visit to the DREAM Center, a health project managed by the Community of Sant’Egidio, and a discussion with the representatives of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The visit is also marked by a calendar of institutional meetings with the Office of Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah and a group of delegates and officials from the Ministry of Agriculture, Health and Local Government Planning and Cooperation.
The attention towards the Republic of Guinea is demonstrated by the desire to add the country to the list of priorities of the Italian Cooperation. Italy, already with the bilateral debt cancellation agreements, has placed itself alongside Guinea Conakry, and the visit was an opportunity to examine the cooperation agreements, examining the updating of the aid credit in the health sector, as well as consolidation and further development in the area of agricultural development and food security.
The meeting with the Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Agriculture made it possible to define the steps necessary to carry out the Paguita project, which aims to restore the production system in the regions of Conakry and Kankan, in Guinea. The objective is to contribute to food and nutritional security in the regions subject to intervention, improving the resilience of vulnerable families, increasing horticultural productivity and incomes of the vulnerable groups concerned. Guinea aims to advance in the direction of agribusiness, moving from simple production to the transformation and processing of agricultural products to increase its weight in value chains. Italy is a candidate to be a model for the transfer of skills in these areas to support a country characterized by a structure based on a fabric of small family-sized agricultural producers.
