Third edition of the Agriculture and Animal Resources International Fair of Abidjan (SARA)

3 - 12 April 2015. Abidjan. Third edition of the Agriculture and Animal Resources International Fair of Abidjan (SARA) (after 15 years of break).

About 600 to 800 exhibitors and 300.000 visitors attended this fair which offered a platform of meeting and exchange on investment opportunities in Ivory Coast agriculture sector. SARA 2015 focused around promotional, scientific, commercial and media activities using at the same time “general public” and “professional” sizes.

The fair was open to all actors in the domains of agriculture, animal and halieutic resources, water and forests, agribusiness and ecotourism, etc. Conferences, workshops, competitions and nine poles were on the agenda of this event co-organized by the Ministry of Agriculture, the one of animal resources and halieutics and the ministry of water and forests.
Themes of the Workshops

1. Public and private investment in the Agriculture Sector: The agricultural expenditures, its nature and quality. The profitability of the agricultural investment and the return on the agricultural investment. All the risks associated to the agricultural investment
2. The effectiveness of the assistance provided for the development of the agriculture sector. Alignment on the assistance provided to the national prioritization. And the coordination of the assistance for a better contribution and a long term development of the agricultural sector.
3. Creation of agricultural raw materials stock in addition to commodities and tools for the development of the agricultural sector. The Ministry of Agricultural is currently conducting a study on the feasibility of creating stocks for the raw materials and this sub theme will treat the conditions and success of such stocks in Côte d’Ivoire.
4. Farms financing and agricultural insurance. Some initiatives are currently being put in place and this sub theme will expose these initiatives and analyses the necessary conditions and measurements in order for these to be submitted to the banking sector.
5. Agriculture Training & Researches. This theme has as objective to address the reforms needed for the trainings and the agricultural researches. Some suggestions to carry out these reforms with success were discussed during this session.
6. Commercial environments of the agricultural products (TEC, APE …). The regional and international commercial environments offer different opportunities aiming to improve the Ivorian agricultural products’ competitiveness. This topic will be all about these opportunities.
7. Agricultural products appreciation and management of agricultural plantations: feasibility and profitability. The local processing of the agricultural products is promoted, this will results in an increase in their added value and create employment. This sub theme discussed the challenges with regards to the agricultural products appreciation.

Click here to download the SARA 2015 brochure, the progamme.

At this occasion the FAO endorsed two new development projects

1. The sustainable intensification of agricultural products in degraded areas in Côte d’Ivoire. This project aims at contributing in a sustainable manner to poverty reduction and to the improvement of food security by increasing the productivity, the improvement of farmers’ incomes, and job creation for youths and women. More specifically, the project envisages optimizing the potential of degraded areas by providing the sustainable utilization of resources such as inputs, soils and water. 
2. The second project focuses on “Capabilities strengthening and experience sharing for sustainable development of the rice value chain in Africa through South-South Cooperation”, funded by the Government of the Republic of Korea. It aims at contributing to making the agricultural sector more modern and more profitable by strengthening national capabilities within recipient countries such as Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria to develop competitive rice value chains.

The previous Day, SARA organized a Panel discussion with high-level representatives of governments and world institutions on ‘Les Assises du SARA- Bilan du Programme National d’Investissement Agricole’ where the Director-General was represented by Mr. Bukar Tijani, his Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa.

Related:

15 to 23 April 2015. The promotion of urban and peri urban sustainable agriculture project in 5 pilot municipalities in the District of Abidjan aims to strengthen the capacity of growers to control systems and agro-ecological production practices. This pilot project is being implemented by University Communities with support from Agrisud International, with co-funding from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Social Development Fund – FSD) and the Autonomous District of Abidjan.

The project launch ceremony was held April 14 in the conference room of the Autonomous District of Abidjan in the presence of the Ivorian authorities concerned, operational and financial partners and civil society organizations involved.

From 15 to 23 April, a Learning Cycle in Agroecology was conducted by Agrisud with the support of logistics by University Communities for the benefit of 24 participants from 15 member CSO partners and future trainers relay for some. This training was held in the Tshanfeto Farm Yopougon.

Common targets of the project are Port Bouet, Bingerville Yopougon, Abobo and Songon. 90 vegetable producers will be directly relied on vegetable production and 9 accompanied sites to transfer best practices among 500 other producers around them.