The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development based in Geneva has appointed AFS as an official Partner to work with them to prepare entrepreneurs to create and deliver solutions for development issues in areas such as health, education, infrastructure development and beyond.
Chairman Ken Stewart recognises this as a significant accolade and congratulated CEO Beltus Etchu and Executive Director Festus Olatunde on the favourable impression they recently created at the UN Investment Forum in Kenya and on Beltus Etchu’s appointment to the UN panel responsible for the UN Women in Business Awards selection team and the annual ceremonies.
He stated ‘’We are especially keen to introduce AFS Health, Education and Infrastructure programmes and to formally align them to current and future UN initiatives. Our Agroforestry coaching of innovative technical and entrepreneurial initiatives has already improved yields and harvests from six to ten times better than existing performances and typifies how by working alongside the UN, we can make a difference to the lives and livelihoods of the disadvantaged. In Africa, AFS are helping transform subsistence farmers into entrepreneurs, creating new markets, empowering and employing women and young people and are also confronting and redressing urban migration. We look forward to learning from this exemplary and admirable organisation and our better understanding of how we can effectively and beneficially work together to empower and create employment and also help build stability and develop new markets and income streams for the benefit of the hungry, the excluded and the oppressed’’.