from MARCUS MUSHONGA in Harare, Zimbabwe
HARARE, (CAJ News) – ZIMBABWEAN President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Wednesday met with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Executive Secretary Elias Magosi to discuss development, regional security and climate.
The meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe barely comes the SADC region experiences worsening drought caused by climatic effects of El Niño, which grossly affected nine southern African countries comprising the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
“This morning, I was honoured to receive SADC Executive Secretary Elias Magosi at State House, accompanied by key directors. We discussed our regional goals and the SADC Extraordinary Summit on economic development, regional security, and climate resilience,” Mnangagwa said.
The Zimbabwean president, who is due to take over the SADC chairmanship from his Angolan counterpart President João Lourenço in August emphasised the need to instill agricultural food security for the region as well as tightening security as more and more countries are being attacked by terrorists.
The discussion on food security followed last week’s meeting of SADC ministers of agriculture, food security, fisheries and aquaculture, who sought to advance agricultural transformation for food and nutrition security of the 16-member regional bloc.
The SADC executive secretary Magosi indicated the region needed to improve its agricultural performance that would boost food production, intra-regional trade, alleviate poverty, hunger and malnutrition, and accelerate economic growth.
Magosi called on SADC member states to make investments in irrigation, take measures to control of transboundary crop and animal pests and diseases and expedite the ratification of the SADC Protocol on Plant Variety Protection of 2017 and sign the SADC Seed Centre Charter of 2017.
BACKGROUND:
El Niño is a climate pattern that describes the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a global climate phenomenon that emerges from variations in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical Pacific Ocean.
– CAJ News