European parliament:
- 31 March – 1 April: Pan-African Parliament (PAP) Parliamentary Summit
- 2 April – 3 April: European Parliament Plenary Session
- 1 April: Committee on Development
Council of the European Union:
- 31 March: Informal Meeting of Directors for Rural Development
- 2 April: Coreper I
- 2 April: Coreper II
- 3 April: Coreper II
CTA:
- 4 April: CTA Brussels Briefing – Realising the Promise of Agriculture for Africa’s Transformation
Other:
- 31 March – 1 April: 5th EU-Africa Business Forum
- 31 March – 1 April: Africa-EU Youth Leaders’ Summit
- 1 April: Africa-EU High Level Seminar on Climate Change
- 2 April – 3 April: Africa-EU Summit of Heads of State
In this week's CTA Brussels video interview, Calvin Miller, Group Leader FAO Agribusiness and Finance Group, tells us a bit more about key contributions of the FAO in the field of agricultural value chain and the constraints with implementing those contributions.
On the 5th of march 2014, Miller held a presentation on "The concept of agricultural value chain finance and types of vc business models" as part of the Brussels Briefing on ‘Revolutionising finance for agri-value chains' organized by CTA Brussels at the ACP Secretariat in Brussels.
The next Brussels Development Briefing on ‘Realising the Promise of Agriculture for Africa’s Transformation’, will be held during the morning of Friday 4 April 2014, at the Egmont Palace in Brussels. This 36th Briefing is timed to coincide with the 4th Africa-EU Summit, and the panel is being organised by the ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), in collaboration with the European Commission and the African Union Commission.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO), together with European Union (EU) and Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) will this week host a two-day workshop in Harare aimed at improving Zimbabwe’s economic performance. In a joint statement, the organisations yesterday said the two-day workshop would provide an overview of its Technical Barriers to Trade programme (TBT) agreement to enable Zimbabwean companies to export products and services and to ensure producers meet demands of the target markets in terms of quality, safety, reliability, environmental compatibility and hygiene.
Agriculture Minister Roger Clarke has underscored the importance of the sugar industry to Jamaica’s economy, particularly in the context of the administration’s efforts to restructure the country’s economy. Speaking at the official opening of the Toll Gate sports complex in Clarendon on Thursday (January 9) Clarke noted that the sector recorded an estimated US$109.7 million in combined earnings and savings during the 2012/13 sugar crop year. The agriculture minister said that the sector continues to be the largest employer in the agricultural industry, accounting for approximately 18 per cent of current jobs. “As such, sugar is still the largest wage earner and foreign exchange earner in the agricultural sector. The (sector’s) performance can (however) be improved if we step up production,” Clarke argued.