CTA invitation to Paramaribo, Suriname for the NAO & RAO meeting

How many people know about the Cotonou Partnership Agreement between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries?

The Cotonou Partnership Agreement is the legal framework ruling relations between the EU and 79 countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP). It is one of the oldest and most comprehensive frameworks of cooperation between the EU and third countries. Signed in 2000 for a period of 20 years, the Agreement unites more than one hundred countries (EU member states + 79 ACP countries) and represents over 1.5 billion people.

Farm Credibly was honored to be invited as a voice of a startup from the private sector at the National and Regional Authorizing Officers meeting in Paramaribo, Suriname from May 28-30th 2019. The support Farm Credibly received through the CTA is ultimately thanks to this agreement between the EU and ACP region and we were very happy to present on “New Technology in Agriculture”.

The meeting aimed to provide a platform for the main stakeholders involved in the ACP-EU development cooperation in the Caribbean to provide an update of the programming and implementation of their National Indicative programmes (NIPs) and the Regional Indicative Programme (RIP), discuss critical issues and provide recommendations to improve the management of European Development Funds (EDF) resources.

We discussed:

• The average age of persons in the Caribbean

• The increasing role of software in agricultural supply chains globally

• Farm Credibly and the use of Blockchain technology and Crowdfunding

• The unbanked and underbanked in Jamaica

• Mobile phone and internet penetration rates

• The advantages of thinking regionally

• Emerging technologies

• The importance of data