Waiganjo Njoroge message after a courtesy call to Ambassador Jackline Yonga,

Rome is the food & agriculture capital of the world!

This is where most global discussions, agreements and decisions on food and agriculture projects, policies and financing are made under the auspices of FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Food Programme, and the Committee on World Food Security. CGIAR, the largest global research system on food and agriculture, has also recently strengthened its presence in Rome.

The Ambassadors in Rome play a critical role in this process. How each country contributes to these global discussions and how it benefits from the decisions made to advance its national food security and nutrition priorities is determined by its Ambassador to Rome.

I paid a courtesy call to Ambassador Jackline Yonga, Kenya’s representative in Rome, and had an incredibly enriching discussion with her. Our discussion highlighted the work she continues to do on #FoodSystems transformation.

She started her tour of duty in Rome just as preparations for the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit were kicking off. As the then Chairperson of the Africa Regional Group of ambassadors in Rome, she rallied fellow ambassadors to produce a common African position for the Summit that was later Championed by the African Union.

This was the only unified regional position for the Summit. It provided a basis for the national pathways that most African countries presented at the summit in September 2021, and are now implementing to transform their food systems.

Thank you for the warm welcome, Ambassador Yonga!