BY DELISA THWALA
MBABANE– His Majesty King Mswati III has called for all African women and young emaSwati to get skills and capital for investing in Agriculture and Green Technology as it is a new way to make money.
His Majesty has been addressing the 5TH United Nations Conference for Least Developed Countries. His Majesty King Mswati III left the country for Doha, Qatar, to attend the 5th UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries. When he left on Saturday His Majesty is accompanied by Inkhosikati LaMotsa.
“We are establishing the National Agriculture Development Fund, which will support smallholder farmers, including women and young and aspiring emaSwati, with skills and capital for green technologies and farming starter packs. The Kingdom has also made significant efforts to develop knowledge-based systems for addressing poverty-related challenges,” said His Majesty when delivering his remarks.
When the King’s speech was broken down by other attendees of the conference, it was agreed that Agriculture development is key to human well-being and has major implications for the environment.
As the world’s population continues to grow, the need for more and better quality food will be imperative, especially considering the various global health and environmental challenges (from COVID-19 to other infectious diseases affecting livestock production). The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that vulnerabilities and inadequacies of global food systems still persist and are under pressure, impacts on production, distribution and consumption can affect livelihoods considerably.
Meanwhile, His Majesty also said several middle-income countries have experienced a massive reduction in development aid assistance, amidst a plethora of challenges, namely; natural disasters, conflicts, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We note that we still have many challenges in several of these (SDG) goals, such as; poverty alleviation, quality education, health, energy, job creation, industry, innovation and infrastructure, just to mention a few.
“We now find ourselves facing daunting challenges in creating an enabled environment for our people to live in, as Eswatini has experienced a massive reduction in development aid assistance. We, therefore, appeal to the international community to give us more financial and technical support in order for us to achieve these (SDGs) targets,” said His Majesty HMK (on the ICT sector): “The ICT sector plays an important role in creating future jobs, namely cloud computing, digital marketing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and software development, among others.”
Pics sourced from the Government of Eswatini’s Social Media.
