France and South Africa
July 27, 2020
On Friday 24 July 2020, Dr Shadrack Ralekeno Moephuli, CEO of the ARC (Agricultural Research Council), Michel Eddi, CEO of CIRAD and Philippe Mauguin, Chair and CEO of INRAE signed a 5-year unprecedented tripartite agreement to strengthen and extend existing collaborations between the three organizations. The institutions confirmed their intentions of working together to tackle the challenges facing the southern Africa region and of contributing to the dialogue on global initiatives that is unfolding in the area. The agreement was initialled remotely by video conference, with Aurélien Lechevallier, Ambassador of France to South Africa, as a witness.
The agreement seeks to reinforce, and expand, existing collaborations between the two French research institutes and South Africa's leading research and development organisation in agriculture and related fields. This is the first cooperation agreement signed jointly by CIRAD and INRAE with an African research institution. The agreement will facilitate staff exchanges, joint organisation of scientific events, and project development on a wide range of scientific topics, extended to new areas such as family farming, climate change adaptation, and the impact of science.
This new agreement follows two previous accords—signed between ARC and CIRAD, in 1999, and between ARC and INRA, now INRAE, in 2014. In the short term, collaborations already exist in the fields of animal health (notably African swine fever), bovine genomic selection, plant protection, and climate change, as well as for the promotion of dialogue and the dissemination of knowledge in the whole African continent.