On February 14, Speaker of Mozambican Parliament Veronica Macamo visited CAAS, accompanied by Yang Jianting, Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC). Prof. Chen Mengshan, Secretary of the Leading Party Group and Vice President Wu Kongming met with the delegation. The two sides conducted in-depth exchanges on strengthening agricultural cooperation within the framework of Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.

Chen Mengshan first briefed the guests on China’s experience in agricultural development over the past three decades. He mentioned that China is a large agricultural country, while its arable land per capita only accounts for 43% of the world average level and the availability of water resources per capita is only a quarter of the world average. Chinese government has attached great importance to the development of agriculture, rural areas and farmers since the reform and opening up. All the government measures including implementing series of preferential policies, increasing investment into the agricultural sector, encouraging agricultural research and facilitating advanced technology into agriculture, have accelerated the transformation from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture in China. China is willing to share this experience with other developing countries. CAAS, as the unique national level agricultural research institution, initiated the Green Super Rice Project in partnership with Mozambique in 2008. Implementation of this project has yielded satisfying achievements in new rice varieties breeding, seeds production and talent training. Chen hoped to expand bilateral cooperation in areas of crop seed breeding, germplasm exchange, agro-product processing, animal and plant disease prevention and control, biogas, biotechnology, agricultural machinery, education of postgraduate students and academic exchanges.

Makamo said, Mozambique is endowed with rich land resources and has great potential to improve its agricultural productivity. Mozambique would like to learn from China’s experience through strengthening bilateral substantive and comprehensive agricultural S&T cooperation, particularly in terms of talent exchange and training.

Liu Rui, Deputy Director, Foreign Affairs Bureau of NPC, Tang Shengyao, Deputy Director General, Department of International Cooperation of MOA and experts from CAAS related institutes also attended the meeting.

After the meeting, the delegation visited National Key Facility for Crop Gene Resources and Genetic Improvement.