On the morning of 1st June, a delegation of 9 people led by His Excellency Dessie Dalkie Dukamo, Governor of Southern Nations Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR) of Ethiopia, accompanied by Zhang Zhi, Deputy Director of Division of Sisterhood Relations Affairs, Foreign Affairs Office of Hainan Province, visited CATAS and attended the Symposium on China-Ethiopia Tropical Agricultural Science and Technology Cooperation. Professor Peng Ming, Deputy Director of the Academic Board of CATAS chaired the symposium.
The symposium was started by Peng Ming who expressed his warmly welcome to the delegation, presented to them a brief profile of CATAS, underlined the similarity of climate and crops between Hainan and SNNPR that provided a good basis for cooperation between CATAS and Ethiopia in personnel training and exchange, and suggested that the two sides can cooperate in the development of human resources in tropical agriculture and in the integrated development of tropical crops, such as coffee, tea, flower crops and sugar cane. He also welcomed Ethiopia to attend the first China-Africa Agricultural Cooperation Forum to be hosted by CATAS later this year.
His Excellency Governor Dukamo expressed his appreciation for the warm reception of CATAS. In view of the established cooperation relationship between SNNPR and Hainan Province and similar climate conditions between the two provinces (regions), he believed that the two sides could share experience in agricultural development, and hoped that SNNPR could learn from CATAS experience in R&D institution-enterprise cooperation, and technologies in coffee pests and diseases management, and sugarcane tissue culture. He pointed out that Ethiopia is a country with high biodiversity and big gene pool, and therefore the research organizations in Ethiopia and China could exchange plant germplasm resources and undertake mutual visit of scientists.
The delegation also visited the exhibition hall of scientific and technological achievements of CATAS.
