The speed and scale of knowledge development and production have been transformed tremendously and digital solutions have become important tools for knowledge exchange and virtual connections. These solutions have also been fostering South-South Cooperation activities and enabling knowledge exchange and other activities to take place remotely. During a seminar held on Friday, April 15, the WFP Centre of Excellence for Rural Transformation in China launched its Cloud School, an online learning platform developed in partnership with the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration.
The seminar brought together WFP experts, representatives from the Chinese government and scholars, who discussed the role of digital solutions for continuous South-South Cooperation work. Daniel Balaban, Director of the WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil, also spoke at the event. “More than ever, as we are still living through pandemic times, South-South and Triangular Cooperation needs to adapt to and benefit from a changing digital world. Sharing good practices and lessons learned is a crucial way to deal with the complexities of topics such as food security and nutrition, school feeding, poverty reduction, and rural transformation”, said Daniel Balaban in his video message.
Over the past 10 years, the WFP Centre of Excellence Brazil have supported around 80 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, using South-South and Triangular cooperation to showcase and share positive experiences in the development of food and nutrition security policies. “With our Virtual Exchange project, created in 2019, the Centre of Excellence developed an ever-evolving product. Through it, we share knowledge through publications, videos, conference calls, reviews of relevant documents, country-specific webinars, capacity-building trainings, as well as events, workshops and seminars”, Daniel Balaban added. As part of the Virtual Exchanges Methodology, the Centre also launched a Virtual Study Visit, which simulates an immersion into the Brazilian National School Feeding Programme (PNAE).
The WFP-China South-South Cooperation Cloud School concretises WFP China Centre of Excellence’s efforts for the systematic E-learning process at the WFP-China South-South Cooperation Knowledge Sharing Platform. It is shaped as an online learning centre which includes courses on the four thematic areas of: Value Chain Development for Smallholders; Post-harvest Loss Management and Food Systems; Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Resilience; and Innovative Poverty Alleviation Initiative, among other themes. Rahamtalla Osman, the African Union Ambassador to China, stated, in a video message, that the platform will also enhance South-South Triangular Cooperation between Africa and China. “I hope it will help more African people to get more knowledge to end hunger”, he said.
You can learn more about the Cloud School here.