The President of Ireland

11/01/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 11/01/2024 09:12

President Higgins to deliver 2024 Kofi Annan Eminent Speakers’ Lecture

President Higgins to deliver 2024 Kofi Annan Eminent Speakers' Lecture

Date: Fri 1st Nov, 2024 | 15:10

Uachtarán na hÉireann, President Michael D. Higgins will next Thursday, 7 November, deliver the 2024 Kofi Annan Eminent Speakers' Lecture.

President Higgins has been invited to deliver the lecture by the President of the African Development Bank, Dr Akinwumi Adesina.

The lecture will be delivered live online from the State Reception Room in Áras an Uachtaráin at 2pm and will be titled Achieving Food Security through Globalisation 'from Below': Issues for Structural Transformation, Inclusive Economy and Sustainable Development in Africa.

The lecture series was launched by the African Development Bank in 2006 and in 2018 was renamed in honour of the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan.

The lecture has been previously delivered by seven Nobel laureates, including winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Science, as well as by a number of Heads of State, Heads of Government, academics and heads of global institutions.

The vital importance of moving past reactive emergency responses to famine, food insecurity and global poverty, and undertaking the bigger and repeating challenge of tackling the underlying structural causes of hunger has been a key theme of President Higgins' work.

The President has written extensively on the topic of food security, including reflecting on the repeated crises which have arisen since he first travelled to Somalia and saw first-hand the devastation of the famine in that country in 1992.

In June of this year, the President's work in this area was recognised when he was awarded the Agricola Medal of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) at a ceremony at Áras an Uachtaráin.

The President's Kofi Annan lecture will build on the paper which he delivered upon receipt of the Agricola Medal, as well as on the previous papers on the topic of food security which he has delivered at the Africa Food Summit in Dakar in January 2023 and at the World Food Forum in Rome in October 2023, as well as on his address to the UN Summit of the Future during the UN General Assembly in New York in September 2024.

The President has consistently raised the importance of food security, and the linkages between it and the interlocking global crises of global poverty, migration, debt and climate change in his meetings with global leaders. This has included the meetings over the last year with US President Joe Biden, His Holiness Pope Francis, the Premier of the People's Republic of China Li Qiang, and the incoming President of the European Council António Costa among others.

The President has consistently called for a new and reinvigorated multilateralism and for an inclusive globalisation 'from below'. It is anticipated that the President will further elaborate on these and related themes in the lecture.

As has been the case with the last three editions of the Kofi Annan Eminent Speakers' Lecture, the event will take place in a virtual format. Those wishing to register to view the event next Thursday can do so at https://afdb.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dSIQ-AfzRq-vklceuLLHPw#/registration

Notes for Editors:

The Kofi Annan Eminent Speakers' Lecture Series is organised by the African Development Bank's African Development Institute (ADI).

The series seeks to enrich the Bank's policy dialogue on contemporary policy challenges facing Africa and to offer concrete and implementable solutions tailored to the specific features and needs of the continent.

Further details of this year's lecture are available at https://www.afdb.org/en/news-and-events/events/irelands-president-michael-d-higgins-deliver-2024-kofi-annan-eminent-speakers-lecture-76083?s=03

Details of previous speakers to deliver the lecture, and copies of their lectures, are available at https://www.afdb.org/en/knowledge/african-development-institute/kofi-a-annan-eminent-speakers%E2%80%99-lecture-series

The address which President Higgins delivered upon receipt of the Agricola Medal of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation in June 2024 can be read at https://president.ie/en/media-library/speeches/achieving-food-security-from-below