Spring festival: ‘Pak-Kenya ties will benefit agriculture’

‘Joint research will help bring down staple prices in both countries’.

FAISALABAD:

Kenyan High Commissioner to Pakistan Mishi Masika Mwatsahu on Monday highlighted the need to improve bilateral cooperation between the two countries in agricultural research and trade.

She was speaking on the opening day of Spring Festival at the University of Agriculture.

She said with stronger ties, the two countries could learn useful lessons on the various challenges they had faced and solutions evolved to tackle these challenges. She said farmers and consumers in both countries would benefit from joint research projects in agriculture, the former by boosting their incomes and the latter by getting better-quality food products.

The Kenyan High Commissioner praised the UAF for giving equal access to education to women. She was told that women students were of 40 per cent of the total enrolment at the university. The majority of these women belonged to rural areas and families that were engaged in agriculture.  She mentioned a UAF-International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Kenya, joint agricultural research project and hoped that the venture would help both countries bring down the cost of staple food.

She said she would ensure visa processing was swift for Pakistani academics intending to visit Kenya for research or teaching purposes.

Earlier, the High Commissioner visited an agricultual exhibition and witnessed a tent-pegging competition and a horse show and addressed the deans’ committee at the Syndicate Room.

She also visited a Womens’ Complex and a Day Care Centre at the university.  She was accompanied by Commercial Attaché Samuel K Chemisto.  Besides various seminars and conferences, the six-day festival features a farmers’ convention, an agricultural exhibition, a flower show, a fancy bird show, a horse and cattle show, a tent pegging competition, a milk production competition, cow and buffalo beauty contests and several cultural shows.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 13^th, 2012.