Port-Louis, Mauritius (PANA) - The European Union (EU) has allocated MRs 115 million Mauritian Rupees (38 rupees = 1 euro) to Mauritius, under the Global Climate Change Alliance Plus (GCCA+) Flagship Initiative, to support climate smart agriculture in the island, PANA learnt Tuesday from official sources in the Mauritian capital. Full text...

Pretoria, South Africa (PANA) - Government policies that bring rural young people into the economic mainstream are essential for South Africa’s sustainable development, according to a global report by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - Potatoes grown from Dutch seeds will yield 2 to 4 times bigger harvests for small-scale, poor farmers in East Africa than potatoes grown using local seed potatoes, a dutch firm says. Full text...

New York, US (PANA) - Some 2.7 million people in parts of Kenya are in urgent need of water and sanitation following the onset of a severe drought, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday, urging the international community to assist the country over the natural disaster. Full text...

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (PANA) - Food shortages are stalking Tanzania's population and the situation is worse in rural areas, according to latest findings by a regional non-governmental organization. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - Development projects, supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), contributed to raising the incomes of poor smallholder farmers and their families in parts of rural Mozambique, the UN agency said Thursday. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - Global food supply conditions are robust, but access to food has been dramatically reduced in areas suffering civil conflicts, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Thursday. Full text...

Nairobi,Kenya (PANA) - The FAO Food Price Index rose slightly in February, marking its seventh consecutive monthly rise, led by increasing wheat and maize prices, the UN food and agriculture agency said Thursday. Full text...

Britannia, Mauritius (PANA) - Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth on Monday evening launched the island's first organic farming zone at Britannia, in the south of the island. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - In a bid to mitigate the impact of persistent drought, the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) in partnership with Rural Education and Agriculture Development Organization (READO), a local non-governmental organization, is introducing a drought resistant variant of sweet potatoes in Somalia. Full text...

Rome, Italy (PANA) - Mankind's future ability to feed itself is in jeopardy due to intensifying pressures on natural resources, mounting inequality, and the fallout from a changing climate, warns a new UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report out on Wednesday. Full text...

Lusaka, Zambia (PANA) – Opposition United Progressive People (UPP) party in Zambia has petitioned Chief Justice Irene Mambilima, asking him to set up a tribunal to probe the Minister of Agriculture, Dora Siliya, implicated in the US$34.5 million Zambia-Malawi maize exportation scandal, known as the maizegate scandal. Full text...

Banjul, Gambia (PANA) - The Gambian Minister of Agriculture, Omar A. Jallow (OJ), has said that agriculture has to be turned from subsistence and life sustaining to commercialized farming and products exported. Full text...

Lusaka, Zambia (PANA) - Sixteen East and Southern African countries agreed Thursday on urgent plans of action aimed at boosting the region’s capacity to manage emerging crop pests and livestock diseases, including armyworm and avian influenza. Full text...

Rome, Italy (PANA) - The outgoing head of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Kanayo F. Nwanze, has urged development leaders and the Fund's governors to ensure there is continued rural investment for countries to meet their commitment to ending poverty. Full text...

Rome, Kenya (PANA) - Fossoun Houngbo, former Prime Minister of Togo, has been appointed the sixth President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN agency said on Tuesday. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - The World Bank has approved financing of a US$25.9 million smart agriculture project in Kenya that aims to improve agricultural productivity and build resilience to climate change, the group says in a statement. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - Drought throughout East Africa has sharply curbed harvests and pushed the prices of cereals and other staple foods to unusually high levels, posing a heavy burden to households and special risks for pastoralists in the region, the FAO said Tuesday. Full text...

Dubai, UAE (PANA) - Failure to act now to make food systems more resilient to climate change will seriously compromise food production in many regions, which in turn could fail international efforts to end hunger and extreme poverty by 2030, the United Nations agricultural agency warned on Monday. Full text...

Kigali, Rwanda (PANA) - Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Tuesday called for a paradigm shift in the way his country adopts new farming technologies such as rain-fed agriculture to beat the wrath of the adverse effects of climate change. Full text...

Banjul, Gambia (PANA) - The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) says The Food and Agriculture Sector Development Project (FASDEP) in The Gambia, financed by the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) Trust Funds with implementation supervised by the African Development Bank (AfDB), is geared towards contributing to improved nutritional standards in rural areas, creating employment and generating supplementary income in rural communities, through fish pond farming schemes. Full text...

New York, US (PANA) - The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) on Friday said new data indicated that wheat in Africa, Asia and Europe is increasingly threatened by fresh groups of wheat rust, and called for early detection and rapid action to keep the fungus under control. Full text...

Gaborone, Botswana (PANA) - Botswana’s has lifted the indefinite ban it placed on fruit and vegetable imports into the country following an outbreak of tomato leaf miner – Tuta absoluta. Full text...

Rome, Italy (PANA) - The FAO Food Price Index rose notably in January, led by sugar and cereals, even as global markets remain well supplied, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Thursday. Full text...

New York, US (PANA) - The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has created a set of emergency prevention tools to save lives and improve food safety and security, noting that food was contaminated every day by diseases and pests, ranging from avian flu to locusts and E. coli bacteria. Full text...

Kigali,Rwanda (PANA) - Agriculture researchers have embarked on the the replacement of old varieties of maize with some of the over 230 improved drought tolerant seeds across 12 African countries, according to an official statement made available on Tuesday to PANA in Kigali. Full text...

Abuja, Nigeria (PANA) – Boko Haram terrorism-induced humanitarian crises in northeast Nigeria may aggravate with more “damning consequences” in the next “lean season” unless urgent and proactive measures are adopted to raise the required US$62 million to support the people in the region, according to a new report. Full text...

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (PANA) - With as little as one-quarter of expected rainfall received, widespread drought conditions in the Horn of Africa have intensified since the failure of the October-December rains, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned. Full text...

Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire (PANA) – Eritrea’s fourth Drought Resilience and Sustainable Livelihoods Programme was boosted Friday with announcement of a loan and a grant amounting to US $7.14 million by the African Development Bank (AfDB). Full text...

New York, US (PANA) - The world must take urgent action to mobilise the estimated US$265 billion a year needed to achieve the first two Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty and hunger by 2030, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Kanayo Nwanze has said. Full text...

New York, US (PANA) – Highlighting the challenges associated with the inextricable links between water and food – the so-called ‘water-food nexus’ – for food security, as well as for sustainable development, the United Nations agriculture agency on Wednesday in New York outlined steps that can be taken to improve water sustainability for current and future needs. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - FAO on Tuesday in Rome hosted a high-level delegation from Japan in a bid to bolster both sides of a strong relationship between the UN agency responsible for fighting hunger and its second-largest contributor to the core budget. Full text...

Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire (PANA) - Guinea-Bissau’s proposed Rice Value Chain Development Project to be implemented in the Bafata and Oio regions of the country on Tuesday received the African Development Bank Group’s support with a loan and a grant amounting to US $5.67 million. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Government of Djibouti on Tuesday signed a financial agreement to address the serious impact of water scarcity facing Djibouti's rural people. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - Canada late Monday announced it will contribute an additional US$1 million to international bodies that develop the standards for food safety and plant protection. Full text...

Berlin, Germany (PANA) - In an era in which challenges like climate change and natural resource scarcity are making agriculture ever more knowledge-intensive, family farmers in the developing world need information and technology tools that can help them not just get by, but thrive and feed a growing world population, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva has said. Full text...

New York, US (PANA) - The Director-General of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Jose Graziano da Silva, on Friday urged the international community to promote more efficient use of water and to take steps to secure water access, especially for poor family farmers. Full text...

Berlin, Germany (PANA) - The German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, in conjunction with the UN Food and Agriculture Oraganisation (FAO), is holding this year's annual Berlin Global Forum on Food and Agriculture from 19–21 January, FAO announced on Wednesday. Full text...

Kigali, Rwanda (PANA) - Rwandan authorities say they intend to expand sugar production capacity to respond to the growing demand of the market in the coming few years, a senior government official revealed Tuesday in Kigali. Full text...

Rome, Italy (PANA) - New drought across swathes of southern Ethiopia may jeopardise the East African nation's restoration of food security after the worst agricultural seasons in decades, the UN food agency warned on Tuesday. Full text...

Kigali, Rwanda (PANA) - The Rwandan authorities on Tuesday announced a ban on the import of chicken and poultry products from Uganda over an avian flu outbreak in neighbouring Uganda. Full text...

Lusaka, Zambia (PANA) – The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) in Zambia has disclosed that investigations have been instituted into alleged corruption relating to the Zambia-Malawi maize deal. Full text...

New York, US (PANA) - A new partnership between the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and Mauritanian authorities is expected to boost finances and nutrition for nearly 300,000 farmers in the southern part of the country. Full text...

Rome, Italy (PANA) - Prices of major food commodities declined for the fifth year in a row in 2016, averaging 161.6 points for the year as a whole, the UN food agency said on Thursday. Full text...

Lusaka, Zambia (PANA) – As the country tackles the destruction of maize fields by army worms, Zambian President Edgar Lungu says measures to control the outbreak are steadily yielding results, but he regrets the absence of members of Parliament in the national emergency operation. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - Countries in the Horn of Africa are likely to see a rise in hunger and further decline of local livelihoods in the coming months, as farming families struggle with the knock-on effects of multiple droughts that hit the region this year, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned Tuesday. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - Achieving gender equality and empowering women is not only the right thing to do but also a critical ingredient in the fight against extreme poverty, hunger and malnutrition, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's Director-General, José Graziano da Silva, said Friday. Full text...

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (PANA) - Although several studies have shown the global increase in food demand by 2050 can be met by increasing yields on existing cropland, a new study has found that countries south of the Sahara would be unable to meet growing cereal demand through yield increases alone. Full text...

Kigali, Rwanda (PANA) - The current President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Dr. Agnes Kalibata of Rwanda, has topped the list of 2016’s African Women of the year in Agriculture, Mining and Architecture, especially for her efforts towards a food secure Africa by the famous New African Woman Magazine, according to a statement made available Thursday to PANA in Kigali. Full text...

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (PANA) - Supporting Tanzania’s agriculture, the Board of Directors of the African Development Fund (ADF) has approved a US$ 93.51 million loan to Tanzania for on-lending to the Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB), the Abidjan-based Fund announced Wednesday. Full text...