The fourth African Union (AU) – European Union (EU) agricultural ministerial conference will take place on 22 June 2021, co-hosted by the African Union Commission and the European Commission.

The conference, which is taking place under Portugal’s EU Council Presidency, follows previous conferences in 2016 (in Noordwijk, the Netherlands), 2017 and 2019 (both in Rome, Italy). The 2017 conference advanced a number of concrete deliverables that fed into the fifth AU-EU summit of November 2017 (held in in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire), while at the 2019 conference, AU and EU member states endorsed a Political Declaration and Action Agenda for the transformation of rural Africa.

The fourth conference will allow AU and EU agriculture ministers to exchange views and share best practices on the development of more sustainable food systems, also in the context of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The event will include four high-level thematic sessions, to be held in parallel. The sessions will allow in-depth discussion on issues with a strong potential for enhanced EU-AU cooperation. A plenary session will close the conference, bringing together rapporteurs from each panel group to report from the morning thematic sessions, followed by conclusive remarks by the AU and EU Presidencies, the AU Commissioner Josefa Sacko, and the EU Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski.

More info and registration here.