Ivorian leader pleads for agriculture/environment harmonisation   Dakar, Senegal (PANA) - Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo said Monday in Dakar that Africa needed to harmonise its environmental and agricultural sectors. He was speaking when he presided over a workshop on "Agriculture, Diversification and Access to Markets in Developed Countries" in a framework of the conference on the financing of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Gbagbo said "the imbalance between agriculture and the environment is one of the numerous problems which hinder the African agriculture." "Some 65 percent of the green areas in Africa have been destroyed," the Ivorian leader said, adding that "there are only less than two million hectares of forests in Cote d'Ivoire out of an original surface area of 16 million hectares." The Ivorian leader noted that "agriculture covered 80 percent of the African economies before their political independence," adding that "a happy medium should be found between the expansion of agriculture and the preservation of natural resources." "In light of that bad co-ordination between agriculture and environment, we must upgrade African farming methods in a move to ensure the well-being of a growing African population," Gbagbo said.   Dakar - 15/04/2002

Your Feedback

Subscribe | Contact Us | Webmaster | Copyright Notice