The Republic of Congo: Thematic Group focuses its activities for 2002 on agricultural rehabilitation and the impact of HIV/AIDS on agriculture and the rural world

Two themes have been chosen during the meeting of 30 April 2002 of the Thematic Group of Rural Development and Food Security in the Republic of Congo:

--Agricultural rehabilitation and starting up the Monitoring and Rapid Alert System in the country.

--The impact of HIV/AIDS on agricultural and rural development in the country.

During the meeting, one of the sub-working groups presented its findings concerning the different agricultural policies adopted by the government on the question of rehabilitation. The sub-working group also indicated the need to put into practice a system of emergency food reserves as well as to create a National Agency of Food-Quality Control.

Another sub-working group made a presentation on "the impact of HIV/AIDS and other diseases in the rural and agricultural environment in the Congo." The speaker began by pointing out the difficulties encountered during the gathering of information due to the delicate nature of this disease and all the taboos involved, and underlined the lack of a coherent policy or reliable statistics that could reflect the impact of the disease in order to establish a strategy to fight back. The participants furthermore noted the aptness of relating the disease to phenomena of rural exodus and decline in agricultural production.

The Thematic Group agreed to organize several debates and workshops on these themes and organize a press conference to present the results to the communication media of the country.

For more information, please contact: fao-cog@fao.org.