 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Michael Edward. I will be your moderator for this side event today. I would like to welcome you all to this COP27 side event on gender-responsive climate action in African agriculture using nuclear science and technology. Before we start our discussions, I would like to introduce our key speakers. The first is Dr. Shema Fersi. Dr. Fersi is a researcher at the National Institute of Research and Psychochemical Analysis in Tunisia. Then our second speaker is Professor Mula. Professor Mula is a Professor of Experimental Plant Ecology at the Ustus Lieblich University in Gießen, Germany, and also a Professor of Soil Science at the University College of Dublin, Ireland. Our third speaker is Mr. Mohammed Zaman, who is a Soil Scientist and a Plant Nutritionist at the Joint FAO IA Center of the IAEA. The research focuses on developing climate-smart agriculture practices. Our fourth speaker, not the least, is Professor Mary Boydou, who is currently present with us here at the COP27. Professor Boydou is a researcher at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission. Her research focuses on radiation protection and also on radiation safety. Professor Boydou is a lead scientist implementing national project on quality assistance, audit of diagnostic radiology in Ghana. She is a member of the WYN Global, the Women in Nuclear Global, an executive member of the WYN Africa and also the founder of the Women in Nuclear in Ghana. Thank you very much, all of you, for attending this meeting. I'm told that we have also many participants currently listening to us and following us online. I'd like to welcome you all. And before we engage in our discussions, I would like to give the floor to the Director of the Division for Africa. Professor Shaukat Abdul-Razak, please, you're welcome to deliver your remarks. Thank you very much, Mikkel Edward, who is the moderator. Professor Shaukat, are you connected, please? Mikkel, can you hear me? Yeah, he's there. Professor Shaukat, you have the floor. Can you hear me, Mikkel? We can hear you loud and clear. Thank you very much, moderator, Mikkel Edward, and good morning, colleagues, wherever you are. It's really an honoured privilege for me this morning to deliver some opening remarks. I take this opportunity, Excellencies, dear colleagues, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, to welcome you all to this IAESI event on gender-responsive climate action in African agriculture using nuclear science and technology. Gender inequality and the climate crisis are two of the most urgent challenges of today. As we better understand and make critical connections between the gender, social equity and climate change, it's time we take actions to a solution. And I want to believe later our panelists will be able to break it down for us on how we can be able to move forward on this very important subject. There are many often overlapping key drivers of food insecurity in Africa, which include climate variability and extreme, extremes and economic challenges. In this way, as we discuss issues of gender-responsive climate action in African agriculture using nuclear science and technology, we are so fully aware of the spectrum of relevant strategic issues that almost must be addressed. Africa is identified as the region of most at risk of climate change due to its high dependence on natural resources and rain-fed agriculture. Current climate-related stresses such as drought, floods, rainfall variability coupled with low-adaptive capacity make African countries highly vulnerable to future climate change. Demographic trends will double African current population to almost 2.4 billion by 2050, putting pressure on the supply of natural resources such as food, water, energy and of course the general ecosystem. While these megatrends will present formidable challenges to African transformation, they will also offer opportunities that could be leveraged to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth. For example, climate-smart agriculture could be used to help small-holder farmers adopt a climate change and at the same time mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. At the global level, projections are that nearly 650 million people will still be facing hunger in 2030. This is 8% of the world population, which is the same as in 2015 when the 2030 agenda was launched. At this level, the issue at the stake is not whether adversities will continue to occur or not, but how the world must take bolder actions to build resilience. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, increasing productive capacity of women small-holder also helps to promote sustainable agriculture practices. We all know that about 75% of the world's food comes from only 12 plants and five animal species, making the global food system extremely vulnerable to environmental shocks such as changing climate patterns and extreme weather events. Small holders who tend to rely more diverse and climate resilient crops represent sustainable alternative to a current model of agricultural production. At both national and the community level, women representation and leadership appear to drive better environmental outcomes. Countries with higher percentages of women in parliament in STEM tend to adopt stricter climate change policies resulting in lower emissions. At the local level, women participation in managing natural resources lead to more equitable and inclusive resource governance and better conservation outcomes. And when the community climate program fully include women, they tend to be more effective and efficient in their use of resources. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, the world is only eight years away from 2030, which is the target here for the SDGs. More efforts are needed to reach many of the SDGs, particular SDG2 targets, while the time to 2030 is narrowing. Indeed, there are national, regional, global efforts to make progress towards SDG2. Yet, there are approving insufficient in the face of more challenging and uncertain context that is more being characterized by ongoing recession. The IAEA through the technical cooperation program takes an integrated approach to address gender inequality and the climate crisis to improve food production in our member states. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to commend the team of speakers for taking time to share later their thoughts and insight and to showcase scientific advances in gender inequality and the climate crisis. I trust by the end of this event they will have demonstrated the interrelation between the gender and the peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology as viable catalyst to climate smart agriculture in Africa. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I wish you all a very productive discussion and I thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Director, for your insight. We took note of your emphasis on the importance of gender inequality and climate crisis as the two most urgent challenges of today. And during this discussion, our panelists will be focusing on deliberating on those issues to really see how, what is the contribution of women in particular in Africa in the area of agriculture. Before we start our discussions, I would like to play the first part of a video. This is a video that was produced by the IAEA Office of Public Information and Communication in Kenya to highlight some of the successes and achievements that we've had under the technical cooperation program in Kenya. When we cook our food at home, we never stop to think where this food in our hands has come from. My name is Amai Konkirwa and I'm a farmer in Kenya. The climate has changed for the last 10 years. It is now getting worse and worse. During planting season, we don't have enough rain, but there are curves at the wrong time when we are almost harvesting. Climate change has brought great challenges in wheat production. New diseases have appeared which we were not used to. And also the water availability from the rain has become a challenge because it is less and it comes at the wrong time. We took up the challenge and decided to apply nuclear techniques to develop a new strain of wheat that is drought tolerant and that can withstand the new types of diseases. Although it took us about three and a half years, we were able to identify a plant that was resistant to the new races of stem rust and it was also tolerant to drought. The demand for the seed is unsatiable. We are not able to satisfy the demand for the seed by the farmers. I foresee that in the medium term, most of the land that is planted wheat will be desparate. But the farmers do not just need good seed. This good seed must grow on good soil and they must have sufficient water. My job here is to find out the best planting technique that can be adopted by farmers in water-limited conditions. Stop, stop. Very good. That's the magic of technology. I'd like to thank you very much for listening to this highlight of some of the work that we are doing in Africa, especially in Kenya and I hope it gives you a perspective of the contribution of the IEA so far as assistance to member state in the field of agriculture is concerned. Now, I would like to start our panel discussions by first inviting our first speaker, Professor Christof Mula. Professor Mula, the first question is for you. As an expert on climate smart agriculture and as the director and professor of the Institute of Plant Ecology at Justus Liebig University, Gießen in Germany, can you please share your knowledge and experience to improve the skills and science, science and technology in Africa in particular to address the food insecurity issues? Over to you, Professor. Okay, yeah. Thank you very much. Can you hear me? It's okay. We can hear you very well. Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much for inviting me to this panel. I think it's a very important panel because it's some of the biggest issues we have to solve in Africa and what I think is, I mean, we all know that agriculture contributes approximately 25% to global warming. We know that on a world average, but what we also know is that in developing countries where there's not a lot of industry, the proportion could be much higher. The other problem we have is that approximately 70% of our freshwater resources are used in agriculture and on top of it, I mean, the director already indicated that the population increase is there. You know, we are faced with quite a number of problems and I mean, just, I mean, you probably know about this, this global hunger index was just released and it shows very clearly that the biggest problems we have in Africa. Okay. How are we going to deal with this one? Crops are generally adapted to the prevailing climatic conditions they find and they are used to change. I mean, there is no talk about this one, but what they experience now is a kind of change that is so quick that they are not able to respond appropriately. You know, this is the central problem we are faced here. And I mean, we know from other things like, for instance, excessive fertilizer use, for instance, that actually supports a leaky system, what we say. Part of the fertilizer will get lost, it will contribute in addition to climate change. Okay. What is important here? We need to come up, I think, with production systems that are what is already indicated before by the director also of climate smart agriculture. And for that one, I think we really need to know the processes that are affected by all these conditions, elevated carbon dioxide, elevated temperature, precipitation changes, drought, flooding, all these kind of issues. And that is where stable isotopes come in. And that is why we have this session here with the IAEA. So you might think, you know, what has the IAEA to say on all of this one. I think it's very important to kind of clarify this one, because it's a bit like a dye, you know, a colored dye, you know, a stabilized isotopes. It actually works that you can trace this dye in the whole system and then you can start realizing where the issues are. And you can pinpoint exactly the processes. And that is where we are going to develop mitigation techniques. New practices for farmers so that they can be more sustainable. In view of the dramatic increase in population, for instance, things like closing the yield gap is very important. But what we really do is, and I think we learned that in the last years, is that we learned from the huge potential of the local knowledge what the farmers have. I mean, farmers in Africa are very intelligent. I mean, they know from experience what actually works, what does not work. And that is kind of what we like to combine with the latest technology, you know, what we have. I think it's very important because closing the yield gap, for instance, will be extremely important so that we can avoid further land use changes of wetlands that are still intact. I mean, practices what could be put into action is, for instance, agroforestry. And I think this is quite interesting because agroforestry and all these kinds of practices, there's nothing new in it. It's only a slow process to actually include them into the production systems. The full potential has not been used yet. And I think that is why we're actually sitting together in COP 27, right? That we kind of put, well, finally, things into action what we already know what should have happened. In general, it should be nature-based solutions, you know, like what I just sketched, implemented in a socio-economic context. And I'm pretty sure we are going to hear a little bit more about this one with the gender issue and all these kind of things involved in it with the next speakers. Okay. Thank you very much for this. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Moula, for setting the stage. I think you've highlighted some very important issues with regard to how or what need to be done to mitigate or at least to address the current climate change issues that are affecting agriculture in Africa. I would like to bring our second speaker. This is Mr. Mohamed Zaman. Mohamed Zaman is a technical officer, a soil scientist, as I said, and plant nutritionist in the IEA joint, FAO IEA division. Mr. Zaman, my question to you actually as a technical officer, as you know very well, Africa faces many food security challenges. Can you please name some of them relating to climate-smart agriculture and how nuclear and isotopic techniques can help to address these problems? Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me? I can hear you very well. Go ahead. Great. So, you know, good food always comes from a healthy and fertile side. And the reality is that total agriculture in Africa is about 1.1 billion hectares. However, the majority of these African soils are low in fertility and low in quality. For example, approximately 40 percent of the African soils are deficient in essential plant nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. And you know, on top of that, we are facing the dilemma of the subsistence farming and the lack of technical know-how and, you know, poor farming practices. Then the next issue or the next problems in Africa is the soil degradation, who are more than 25 percent of the degraded land of the agriculture of the productive soil in Africa is degraded, meaning that the soils are either eroded by water, by salinity or by acidity, according to the UN estimation. The loss of about 280 million tons of cereal crops can be prevented if appropriate measures are taken in term of mitigation of soil erosion. Then the director and my previous colleague, you know, he touched down on the climate change. So let me. Okay. Zaman, I think we are facing some challenges so far as you're concerned. Maybe as you prepare to come back, we move to the next speaker. I would like to bring in now Professor Meri Bwadu, for example, Meri Bwadu, as I said, she's a researcher at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, but she's also representing women in nuclear. And I'd like to ask Professor Bwadu, can you highlight for us some of the achievements in the area of women in nuclear, especially focusing on gender perspective in the agricultural sector and how it has impacted the food security agenda in Africa? Can you also talk about the role of women in nuclear national chapters in Africa and the role they play as an important partner of the IAEA in human resource development? Good afternoon, distinguished ladies and gentlemen. Go ahead. Thank you very much, Mr. Edward. Good afternoon, distinguished ladies and gentlemen. First and foremost, I would like to thank the technical cooperation division of Africa for the invitation and also for sponsoring me to be here today. As you can see, it's a special moment. So to start with, since the establishment of women in nuclear global in 1983, there had been advocacy for regional establishments. Eventually in 2019, in Morocco, five women were tasked as a steering committee to ensure the establishment of women in Africa, and that was one of the five. So we got ready, we started, and in September 2020, when Africa was inaugurated, virtually because at that time of the COVID-19, since that time, more women in nuclear national chapters has been established. At that time, there were only three national chapters, but as of now, there are 13 regional national chapters in Africa. So 10 more national chapters has been established since 2020 and is growing. The membership currently stands over 400 and is also counting. In terms of achievements, I think we cannot say much more than what I've just said. In 2019, there was no regional chapter for Africa in terms of women in nuclear, but now we have and we have also established 10 more national chapters. These are themselves achievements and we are hoping, encouraging more nationals to join the group. So in terms of the effects of women or the impact of women in agriculture, I think we just saw what happened in Kenya. There's also the Tanzania story where women are helping in terms of crop production and improvement through their activities. You can also talk about a woman in, I think she is Namibia. Yes, Namibia, and she is working in the area of crop mutation for rice, for sorghum, for cowpea, and this is helping a lot. We are through our activities, encouraging more women, interacting with more women to ensure that their activities come to the fore so that young women and girls, especially, can join and take up careers in nuclear. We are doing awareness programs in Ghana and elsewhere ensuring that more women and young girls will take up careers. So we do outreach, we do awareness programs, and we are encouraging more and more women to join because women, we form about 50% of the population of the world and they are doing so much in agriculture and other places. So the more they are aware of what is happening, the more other people can join. Somebody said that if you don't know that someone has done something, you will not be able to join. So by our exposure, by our outreach and awareness, we hope to encourage more women to join. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Boadu. I think we cannot overemphasize the role, the important role that women play in the area of agriculture, so you've captured that very well. My next speaker is Dr. Sharma Fezi from Tunisia. As I said, she's currently a researcher at the National Institute of Research and Physochemical Analysis in Tunisia. My question to you, Professor Sharma, Africa produces large amount of wastewater. Can you let us know what types and their qualities and if there is any opportunity for reusing this water? What is the future outlook on this? Thank you very much. Do you hear me? We can hear you loud and clear please. Go ahead. Thank you very much. Thank you for this invitation and I am glad to represent women scientists in Africa. As you mentioned, Africa produces large amounts of wastewater. They are generated mainly from municipal and industrial, are generated by this industrial operation and these contaminants can reach water resources, both surface or underground waters, by the emission of gases, liquid or solid materials and about the kind of treatment. Dr. Fezi, I think we are having some internet connection problem with you. While we try to resolve that, we will move to the next speaker. We'll come back to you later. I would like to bring in again Professor Mary Boadu. Professor Boadu, please. What are some of the new innovative ways of engaging with women scientists on the continent of Africa as the impact of climate change continues to intensify and affect food security? Thank you very much. So with our outreach programs, which has been ongoing in Ghana and elsewhere, we also joined together with AFKON and we ran webinars. We did one, in fact, we have done three already and through this we are able to bring a lot more women together. So we are networking and making sure that the activities of women all over Africa come to bear with each other. We expand our ranks through that means. So we are doing webinars, we are doing outreach and we are ensuring that we expand our ranks. Regarding the joint program we have with AFKON, that is how we got to know what other women are doing. In the first of the program we talked about the peaceful application of nuclear covering all activities, all areas, including our Greek. And so at that we got to know what is being done in Namibia, what is being done in Kenya and what is being done in Ghana as well. And the interaction and contribution from each other continue from that end. We are hoping that the barriers that hinders women from growing and then expanding and also promoting themselves can be reduced. Usually because women are the ones responsible for child care and home upbringing, they sometimes surface their progression in career surface. And we are hoping that some of the challenges can be mitigated, it can be reduced by having flexible terms at the offices, at the institutions to ensure that women can progress just as much as men are progressing. So this is one area we are hoping we can through working with institutions to ensure that women can also progress by eliminating barriers that hinders their growth. Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. I think you've highlighted a very important point regarding the contribution of female scientists. But I would like to add to that also the important role that we are promoting, the important role of women in the technical cooperation program where female scientists like yourself, you are leading programs. Technical cooperation programs, either national or regional. But I also want to take this opportunity because we have a lot of young people who are connected to make reference to the IEA recent initiative launched by the Director General, the Marie Slovdokas Curie Fellowship Program, which is a training program that awards master degrees to young scientists in Africa to pursue their master's program in different areas of the peaceful use of nuclear technology. Thank you very much, Dr. Boadu. My next is Professor Mula. I would like to bring Professor Mula back for your second round of questions, Professor Mula. Can you briefly discuss the impact of agriculture on climate change and vice versa? In particular, greenhouse gas emission and what is your group in Germany doing to address this problem? What can we learn from this? Over to you, Professor Mula. Okay, thank you very much. I already indicated in my first little talk that there is an issue of agriculture emitting greenhouse gas emissions, right? I mean, we may actually add fertilizer into the ground and particular nitrous oxide is an issue. Overall, this contributes to 6% of the global warming. And that is, of course, giving us negative feedback effects. You know, we have elevated temperature, we have different climatic conditions, and we have experience, and we noticed that from the last years we have droughts, we have flooding, all of these kind of issues, right? And that is where we're actually trying to do some research in Giesen. We're not doing modeling studies, but what we are actually planning to do and what we are doing is that we are collecting data of the future. You know, we are, for instance, simulating the climatic conditions that are approximately happening in the middle of the century. That is a kind of climatic condition we will all experience on this earth. What are we going to do? We look at elevated carbon dioxide, at elevated temperature, at different precipitation patterns, and from that, what we are actually trying to do is, first of all, validation data for all these global models, but on the other hand, getting some real data for planning, for promoting certain agricultural practices. With your introduction, you already mentioned that I'm working at the Justus Liebig University, right? And I'm pretty sure that most of you have heard about Justus Liebig. You know, he was the pioneer in agricultural chemistry, and that happened 200 years ago. You may actually think that it happened very long ago, right? But what he actually experienced was exactly more or less the same what we experienced today. He experienced severe climate change, and there is where he kind of got up and said, well, we need to understand this, we need to kind of find solution to this one, and he was the first developing fertilizer, that comes from the Giesen laboratories from Justus Liebig University. What I really would like to say, there is a lot of research going on, and what we I think need to do is to network appropriately. With that research, what's going on here, what's going on in Africa and elsewhere in the world, and I think this is probably one of the big incentives for the IIA even to establish a Liebig Center for Agricology and Climate Impact Research with us. And that is where we are actually trying to do a close science-based cooperation with various UN organizations, with various universities, local as well as regional partners, and I think if we learn something, then it is this, that we really need to follow what we call stakeholder approach. We need to find a win-win situation for the farmers in Africa so that we can actually build up capacity. And that is, I think, where the developed countries also comes in to support and to make available the scientific knowledge we have, but combining that with what we have on board in Africa, for instance, targeted funds for best practices in agriculture, and I think this is also addressing the gender and the women issues in Africa and in other parts of the world that experience similar issues. Small-holder farming structures need to be supported. We need to learn from them. We need to supply them with our knowledge. That is more or less what we learned and what we are planning to do in close collaboration with the colleagues in Africa and elsewhere in the world. Maybe you want to remember that name Liebig Center, which will probably coming up from the beginning of next year with a very close focus on Africa and to find solutions there. Well, thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Mula, for those highlights. I am particularly impressed by the work that your university has been able to achieve over the time and its contribution to agriculture. I did not know honestly that the invention of urea, fertilizer to improve crop productivity was carried out in your university. Because we have not heard so far from Professor O'Shaima, I would like to bring her back. Professor O'Shaima, if your connection allows you, I would like to take you to your second question of the day. What is your group in Tunisia working on wastewater reuse? What technology is being used to process wastewater reuse? Thank you, dear moderator. Do you hear me now? I can hear you very well, please. I hear you very well, but I do not know why I am interrupted. It is technology. You can never tell. But we can hear you. Go ahead. Thank you again for this opportunity and I am glad to represent women scientists from Africa. So in Tunisia, large community is working on wastewater use. They include researchers from civil or disciplines. I can mention environmental chemistry, agronomy, geochemistry, energy, etc. And for sure they collaborate with non-academic partners such as industry, municipalities, NGOs, etc. Some startups also. Actually, most of the municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants located in Tunisia use conventional aerobic activated sludge process as secondary treatment. A lower number of plants possess tertiary treatment as you know, like other countries from Africa. But the choice of the efficient technology depends on the quality of wastewater and also on the potential of use of treated water. So I can mention some examples for processes tested here in Tunisia. Like I said, aerobic biological treatment, for example, for organic compounds or phenolic removal, constructed wetlands especially for heavy metals and emerging organic contaminants, for example. Moving bed biological reactor and BBR and membrane processes such as nanofiltration, reverse osmosis. These ones are usually tested as tertiary treatment for high quality of treated water. We have also advanced oxidation processes for emerging organic contaminants removal. But many of these processes are still used at pilot plants because of the disengagement of some industries and decision makers in Tunisia. I wish and I think that we all wish that national and international laws will be respected and applied in all African countries in order to guarantee a better quality of treated wastewater allowing the use of incomplete safety for our health and for our environment. Thank you again. Thank you very much Professor Sharma. I think that technology is very important for many African countries and we will reach out to you to see how you can actually share your expertise so that more African countries can make good use of water that has been processed to be reused in the agricultural sector. I would like to bring in Mr. Zaman for his second question. Muhammad, what are some of the technologies that you view as low-hungry fruits when it comes to smart agriculture in African countries? What are the technologies that African countries could adopt tomorrow? Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Zaman, can you hear me? You're muted. We can hear you. Okay, great. Very good. Michael, you know under African conditions soils are largely poor in fertility. We need to take a holistic or integrated approach by developing a package of technology consisting of climate smart agriculture practices and then those climate smart agriculture practices need to be disseminated in the farmer language as a package of technology to make a difference and then most of the time you know farmers don't see agriculture as a business. They just see it as sowing and harvesting. So agriculture shall be seen as a business and to remain in this business they need to be smart enough to adopt climate smart agriculture practices and nuclear techniques has an important role to develop such climate smart agriculture practices and I'll give you some example from African perspective. For example, Kathama is one of the major crops in Africa but its average yield on the farmer field is less than 10 tons per hectare. But working in Africa in a number of countries including Burundi, Central Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana and also in Nigeria through strategic application of nutrient water using animal mineral residues of leguminous crops contributed to not only building soil fertility minimizing the dependence on expensive chemical fertilizer but also increase the production of cassava from 10 tons to 40 tons which is more or less frozen. That's fine. I think we got very clearly your points. Maybe as we prepare to come back to you later if time allows we will just want to bring in maybe Professor Sharma for the second time because she was not able to speak to us when we asked the first question. Professor Sharma, I want to come back to you again. We're talking about gender in the agricultural sector. Yes, I'm here. My first question to you before we had some technology problems or some technical problems was Africa produces large amount of wastewater. Can you let us know what types and their qualities and if there is any opportunity for reusing this water? What is the future outlook on this? As you mentioned, Africa produces large amount of wastewater as I said mainly regenerated from municipal and industrial activities and these large contaminants are discharged into the environment so they generated how to say emission of gases, liquid and solid materials. The main pollutants are organic compounds, nitrogen, phosphorus, suspended and soluble solids, pathogen and sometimes specific pollutants when we talk about industrial wastewater such as heavy metals, pharmaceutical, etc. The reuse of treated wastewater in irrigation is a strategic choice which aims to preserve the limited water resources of African countries and I will give you an example from Tunisia. The first experience of irrigated treated wastewater from municipal wastewater treatment plant dates back to 1965 as part of a project to protect an area of 1,200 hectares of citrus and after that following this experience and since 1987 the policy of reusing treated wastewater has been strengthened and the areas irrigated by treated water have been included in the regular planning of the sector and in 2019 62 million cubic metres of treated wastewater was reused of which 21 million cubic metres were reused directly in irrigation of more than 4,000 hectares among more than 9,000 hectares developed to be irrigated by treated wastewater on developed agricultural perimeters, gulfs and green spaces and we have some experience on recycling treated wastewater in industrial process steps which are also implemented nowadays in Tunisia for a circular economy purpose for example for cooling or washing steps but agriculture continues to be the sector that experts the greatest pressure on water resources and more than 60% of total water are used for agriculture in Tunisia for the last part of question as future outlook we need to support and encourage the reuse of treated wastewater in order to elevate water scarcity especially for irrigation or fertilization and to work on social acceptance water use for agricultural irrigation contributes to the promotion of the circular economy to grow the recovery of nutrients contained in the treated wastewater and their application to collapse and thank you again Thank you very much Professor O'Shamma I'm glad that in spite of the technical problems you were able to share your highlights your insight regarding the questions that have been put to you I'm particularly impressed with the knowledge that you share with us especially the reuse of treatable water for irrigation and also for fertilization I think this is very important to address the issue of water scarcity in many African countries as we head towards the conclusion the end of this side event I would like to first play a short video very quickly Craig and then I will give the floor to the director of the division to provide his concluding remarks Craig, I think we can do without it My sincere apologies for that we're having some technical problems and therefore we cannot play the video I would therefore like to invite the director of the division for Africa Professor Shaukat Dabdurazak if you're connected Professor Dabdurazak please you have the floor for your closing remarks please Thank you very much Mikkel once again just to express my gratitude to all the panellists for really being very eloquent in their presentation and all the participants who have been able to join us online and those who are physically there at the COP 27 I think what is coming out very clearly on this very important subject on the gender perspective as far as the climate action African agriculture is concerned is that we already know what the issues are on the table and we already know there are possible solutions from different quarters I think we have already been told within Africa and beyond Africa so I just want to re-emphasize the importance of networking that we need to strengthen that networking we need to work together under partnership collaboration and building synergies as you all know under the SDG 17 this is very important also the other thing is we need to see how we can be able to transfer that technology that is on the shelf or the technology that is in the demonstration plot the way to the farmers so that it can impact positively I also want to advocate on the socialization of science and in this case is the socialization of nuclear science technology how this technology can have positive impact on the society and the global at large it has already been mentioned here that nuclear science technology also has a space and a niche as far as the secular economy is concerned and what we are saying is that this is also another viable option that will be able to contribute in the challenges of the climate change so I think in my opinion the glass is half full let's continue working together let's pull the resources together I would like to assure you here at the International Atomic Energy Agency in the technical cooperation together with other institutions we will be more than happy to continue engaging our members to continue working with partners and collaborators so that we can be able to see how we are addressing these issues of the climate change by using smart climate agriculture and in this context so that we can be able to increase food safety and food security in Africa once again from my side many thanks to all of you and I wish you all the very best for the remaining of the days there at COP27 thank you so much thank you very much Professor Shaoukat we would like to thank you also for taking time on Saturday to be with us virtually we would have loved you to be here physically with us but thanks to technology you are here with us thank you so much I would like to also take this opportunity to really really really on your behalf Director express my appreciation to not only Professor Bwadu who is presently here in the COP27 with me but also the three experts who were able to connect online and to share their site and their perspective regarding the topic that we had for this side event it's been a great pleasure discussing this topic with you I'm sure that there is a lot we can take from this discussion and see how we can improve food security in Africa it is the beginning of a long journey we have started the journey already the Department of Technical Cooperation through the Division for Africa is already assisting Africa let's continue to work together so that we make Africa great and contribute to the Agenda 2063 the Africa that we all want thank you very much for all participating in this event I wish you good continuation have a good day Miquel please before we finish may I ask to call everybody to open camera to get to a group photo okay thank you very much Motaz all those who are connected online please turn on your camera we would like to take a group photo but Motaz you are excluding those who are not connected online like myself oh I'm there okay okay you come okay Motaz are we done? yeah yeah okay now thank you thank you very much