Baku
The International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC) and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) (Agriculture Division) in collaboration with IsDB Group Business Forum (THIQAH) jointly held a live webinar entitled ‘The Role of AgriTech in Food Security & Sustainability’ to discuss sustainable climate-smart agricultural technologies for achieving food and nutrition security.
The AgriTech webinar series is an initiative by the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC) to support the OIC member countries to leverage the power of the digital transformation to advance growth in the agricultural sector, focusing on promoting trade and investments of agricultural products.
The webinar highlighted the most promising AgriTech solutions to enhance efficiencies of agricultural value chains at the national, regional and global level. The webinar also focused on raising environmental awareness and demonstrated AgriTech solutions that can contribute positively to preserving and restoring the environment, as well as establishing strategic partnerships among various stakeholders to materialize the applications of AgriTech solutions and good agronomic practices to advance the sector.
The CEO of ITFC, Eng. Hani Salem Sonbol, delivered the opening remarks at the webinar. He noted that ‘Globally, agriculture employs around 1 billion people, that is 1 in every 3 workers. In OIC member countries, agriculture employees over 230 million people, nonetheless the yield is way below the global average. Such gap can only be bridged with knowledge and technology.’
He also added that, ‘In ITFC we believe in building strategic partnerships among various stakeholders to collaborate in addressing the food security and environmental sustainability issues. There is a role for Governments, MDBs, FIs, agriculture companies, commodity traders, tech providers, legal firms, research centers and academic institutions.—MENAFN
