BACKGROUND
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Background
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) adopted by the United Nations committed to address the global challenges being faced by mankind by the year 2030. They including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice. As per the SDG Goal #1 economic growth must be inclusive to provide sustainable employments and promote equality which will in due course help to end extreme poverty in the most impoverished areas. The main objective of Goal # 2 of Agenda 2030 is to promote investments in agriculture which is crucial to enhance the capacity for agricultural productivity and sustainable food production systems which eventually are necessary to help alleviate the perils of hunger. As the producers of food, farmers’ role in hunger eradication is obvious, but farmers also represent one-third of the world’s population and majority of them are small-holder and it is imperative that major investments should be targeted to small-holder agriculture. Access to finance is considered as the critical inputs for the growth of the agriculture and allied sector.
Being mindful to this emergent situation and urgency to improve the flow of finance and investment in rural and agricultural sector with a larger objective to achieve the financial inclusion, the regional and global rural and agricultural credit associations unanimously adopted to convene the ‘World Congress on Rural and Agriculture Finance’[1] at regular interval (3 year) which will be hosted by the regional/global agricultural credit associations around the globe. In this direction, ‘1st World Congress’ was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia during 05-07 November 2005, ‘2nd World Congress’ was organized in Bangkok during 31 October-03 November 2007. The ‘3rd World Congress’ was held in Marrakech, Morocco during 26-30 October 2010; Paris hosted the ‘4th World Congress’ during 26 to 28 September 2013. The ‘5th World Congress’ was held in Dakar, Senegal, during 22-25 November 2016. The ‘6th World Congress’ was last held in New Delhi, India, 12-13 November 2019. During these years, the World Congress forum brought together top experts in rural and agricultural finance and the stakeholders around the globe to share their rich experiences on emerging and cross cutting issues relates to the sector.


This 7th World Congress to be held at the FIRA Campus, Morelia, Mexico from 23 to 25 November 2022 which is being co-hosted by the Fideicomisos Instituidos en Relacion con la Agricultura (FIRA), Mexico and the Latin American Association of Development Financing Institutions (ALIDE). This global event is being organized in collaboration with four other Regional and global Associations: the African Rural and Agricultural Credit Association (AFRACA), the Asia-Pacific Rural and Agricultural Credit Association (APRACA), the Near East–North Africa Regional Agricultural Credit Association (NENARACA) and the Confédération Internationale du Crédit Agricole (CICA).