The 10th Meeting of the Southern and Eastern African Cotton Forum (SEACF) was held near Lusaka, Zambia
9-10 March 2010
The 10th Meeting of Southern and Eastern African Forum (SEACF) was hosted by the Zambian Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MACO), and the Cotton Development Trust (CDT) of Zambia. The meeting took place at a venue near Lusaka from 9-10 March 2010. Delegates from Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, CABI and ICAC attended the meeting.
The business meeting of SEACF was on 9 March, and on 10 March the workshop on “IPM in Cotton” and a field trip. As usual, during the business meeting, country representatives made presentations about the state of cotton research in their respective countries. The agenda, list of participants and papers presented are available here. The meeting decided to change the structure of the SEACF and elected Mr. West Chitah, Director, Cotton Development Trust, Zambia as the new Chairman of SEACF.
Other important decisions were;
1. It was decided to have the next meeting in Kenya. The Coordinator of the next meeting, nominated by the host country will serve as Vice Chairman and become chairman at the next meeting, if the host country does not object and the meeting approves it.
2. Mozambique offered to host the next SEACF meeting, in case Kenya cannot host the meeting.
3. The Secretariat of SEACF will stay in South Africa at IIC, Rustenburg and as proposed by the new Chair and approved the meeting, Dr. Graham Thompson of South Africa will serve at Forum Coordinator.
4. Structure of the program will change from the next meeting. It will be a more technical forum with scientific papers. There will be no country reports. The SEACF meeting will be a two day meeting without any specific workshop, etc.
5. It was proposed that the theme of the next meeting could be either climate change or soil health.
6. Meetings of SEACF will continue to be held every two years.
7. The Stickiness workshop issue (from 2005) was dropped from the agenda of the next meeting. Countries agreed that stickiness is not a major problem in the region anymore.
Dr. Graham J. Thompson
Coordinator, SEACF can be contacted at GThompson@arc.agric.za