Enabling poor rural people
to overcome poverty



GC36On 13 February 2013 at 11.00a.m. you may follow via webcast a side event on "Secrets of mutually beneficial and successful partnerships".

Tulio Garcia, Executive Director of Cooperative 4Pinos; Salah Hegazy, Chairman of Agrofood; Mylène Kherallah, Senior Technical Advisor for IFAD on Private Sector Development; Tadesse Meksela, General Manager of Coffee Cooperative Orioma; and Lucian Peppelenbos, Director of Learning and Innovation will share their experiences in forging successful partnerships with public/private sector actors and also with and between smallholder producers.

Alex Puissant, international journalist and facilitator, will moderate the discussion with the speakers and the audience on what it takes to build beneficial, sustainable partnerships.

The speakers will discuss the social impact of such partnerships at community level and examine the challenges and opportunities of:

  • organizing smallholder farmers into cooperatives
  • enabling smallholders to expand their operations in a cost-effective manner and gain access to markets
  • providing smallholders access to knowledge, research, technology and finance
  • developing policies that cater to the needs of all stakeholders and partners.

Panellists

Salah Hegazy is the President and owner of the Agrofood company in Egypt. Agrofood processes, packages and exports vegetables produced by smallholder farmers. Hegazy started his career in 1958 with the Egyptian-International Cotton Exporting Company as an expert in cotton exporting. He then joined the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which focuses on economic and social development in Egypt, Africa and Asia.

Mylène Kherallah, is the Senior Technical Advisor for IFAD on Private Sector Development – Rural Enterprises and Markets.  She prepared IFAD’s Private Sector Development Strategy in 2011. Previously, she worked as the Regional Economist for the Near East, North Africa, and Europe Division of IFAD and worked on issues related to regional food security and rural development.

Prior to joining IFAD, Ms Kherallah was a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) working mostly on agricultural market reform issues in Africa. She also worked as a long-term consultant in the Middle East and North Africa division of the World Bank. Tadesse Meskela is the founder and General Manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union of Ethiopia. An advocate for fair trade, he started working for the Ethiopian state agriculture bureau in early 1990s. Inspired by the cooperative system in Japan, in 1999 he successfully developed a cooperative union system that helps Ethiopian coffee farmers get a fair price for their product. The Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative started with 22,691 members and a capital of US$90,000. Since its founding, the cooperative has delivered US$20,000,000 dividends to its members, and with the fair trade premium it has managed to build 40 primary schools, 10 high schools and clinics.

Tulio Rene Garcia Morales is the Executive Director of Cooperative 4Pinos of Guatemala, founded in 1979. Since 1989, Cooperative 4Pinos has been exporting fresh vegetables to the United States. It has over 3,500 members with an annual production of 12,000 tons exclusively for export purposes.  Mr Garcia is also the General Manager of his family business of San Juan Agro Export. He has vast experience in the design of the fresh produce market and value chains of perishable products and is the Chair of the Guatemalan Export Association (AGEXPORT).

Lucian Peppelenbos is Director of Learning and Innovation at IDH (The Sustainable Trade Initiative). IDH seeks to impact commodity supply chains by co-investing with frontrunners from the industry and civil society. Peppelenbos is responsible for organizing strategic research and innovation around critical challenges and key unlocking moves in the sector programs, specifically in timber, cocoa, cotton, soy and aquaculture. He previously was a senior adviser at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) and a policy advisor in the Dutch Parliament. Peppelenbos started his career as a supply chain consultant based in Chile.

Moderator

Alex Puissant is a journalist and an independent conference facilitator. He has written for weekly and daily newspapers and has 20 years of experience with public television in Belgium as an international correspondent and news anchor. He has facilitated more than 500 events organized by the United Nations and other international organizations, trade federations and global corporations. 

Social media and webcasting

The Thirty-sixth Session of IFAD’s Governing Council is an interactive event thanks to a number of social media components. Social reporters will keep the outside world informed through blogs, tweets, posting interviews and pictures on the following IFAD social media channels. You can follow the event via webcast and by following #ifadgc

 

Hot links

Panels, round tables and side events

Useful links