Opinion
04 Nov 24

President Michael D. Higgins to deliver Kofi Annan Eminent Speakers’ Lecture on food security

Michael D Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

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

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

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 previously been 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.

In June, President Higgins' work in this area was recognised when he was awarded the Agricola Medal of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. According to a press statement, the upcoming 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.

Those wishing to register to view the event this Thursday can do so here.

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. His writings on Somalia, as well as numerous fascinating articles from the then-future President on Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Tanzania, Morocco and Western Sahara as well as Chile, El Salvador and more can be read in Michael D. Higgins' Power To The People: The Hot Press Years - available to pre-order now.