Interview: China has experience to share with other developing countries in rural development: UN official
A woman dries farm produce at Huangling Village of Wuyuan County, east China's Jiangxi Province, July 3, 2024. (Xinhua/Du Xiaoyi)
by Xinhua writer Wang Siyuan
BEIJING, July 26 (Xinhua) -- China has plenty of experience in rural development to share with the Global South, said Donal Brown, a senior official with United Nation's specialized agency, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), adding that the fund will work with China to convey the experience to other developing countries.
"I heard a lot about Chinese government's rural revitalization policy and I saw it in action. It is impressive," Donal Brown, the associate vice president of the Program Management Department at IFAD, said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.
Brown visited China earlier this month. He attended the Second High-Level Conference of the Forum on Global Action for Shared Development and visited an IFAD-financed project in central China's Hunan Province.
"It must be one of the most beautiful places in the world," said Brown while talking about his trip in Hunan, adding that he is very pleased to see the Chinese government's commitment to really bringing development to some of its most remote areas, and efforts to ensure that ethnic minorities and women are very much included in the whole development process.
China has done a lot to develop rural areas to make them attractive to young people, who can bring back more innovations and technologies, and the country is striving to make agriculture more climate friendly, he said.
Brown spoke highly of the over 40 years of cooperation between IFAD and China. "IFAD has been working in China for 44 years, and we share a very similar vision in terms of rural development, from poverty elimination to rural revitalization," he said.
China plays a very important role in South-South cooperation, said Brown, citing that China renewed the China-IFAD South-South and Triangular Cooperation Facility and made an additional RMB contribution equivalent to 10 million U.S. dollars to be used to support agricultural development of the Global South last month.
IFAD-financed projects can be used to share China's development experience, innovations and technologies with other developing countries, said Brown.
For instance, IFAD has been working in Tanzania to help local farmers to take China's experience to improve the processing of sunflowers, and the fund is looking at using China's satellite data and information systems in Africa to deliver accurate weather forecast and improve agricultural production, he said.
Brown looked forward to building an even stronger partnership with China. "We will widen the number of institutions in China we work with and we will explore ways of utilizing China's expertise directly," he said.
Brown noted that people who are just lifted out of poverty may find it hard to adapt their farming system and businesses to climate change, and in this regard China also has experience to share.
"China is very committed to dealing with climate change and it has shown a lot of innovations in the area," said Brown, adding that the IFAD will keep working with China and bring its expertise in climate-smart agriculture and making the rural economy greener in other developing countries.
